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^ THE UNITED STATES 

BECAME A NATION,,,-, 



JOHN FISKE 





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HOW THE UNITED STATES 
BECAME A NATION 




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HOW THE UNITED STATES 
BECAME A NATION 



BY 

JOHN FISKE 



With Illustrations 
mid 3Iap 



BOSTON, U.S.A. 
GINN «& COMPANY, PUBLISHEKS 

1904 



UBRARY of CONGResS 
Two Cooies ltec«tved 

JUL 19 190^ 

C»pyn^n( tntry 
CLASS O^ XAfc. No 

9oyof 

COPv L 



CoPYRifJHT, 1887, 1904 
By GINN & COMPANY 



L.301 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Period of Weakness 5 

Conditions of American progress. Hamilton's meas- 
ures. Whisky insurrection. Indian War. Rise of 
parties. "Citizen" Genet. Jay's treaty. Troubles with 
France. Alien and sedition laws. Kentucky and Vir- 
ginia resolutions. Death of Washington. Downfall of 
the Federalist party. The Louisiana Purchase. Ex- 
ploration of Oregon. The Tripolitan-War. Burr and 
Hamilton. Embargo. 

Second War with Great Britain 75 

Strength of the Republicans. Declaration of war. 
Naval victories. The war in the Northwest. The war 
on the Lakes. The war in the South. Treaty of Ghent. 

The Rise of the Deaiocracy 107 

"The era of good feeling." Florida. Monroe doc- 
trine. Growth of the nation. Growth of slavery. 
The Missouri Compromise. The young West. Whigs 
and Democrats. Tariffs. Nullification. A new era. 
The spoils system. Whigs come into power. Oregon 
and Texas. 

The Slave Power 151 

War with Mexico. Wilmot Proviso. California. 
Effects of the Compromise. Kansas-Nebraska bill. 
The struggle for Kansas. Dred Scott. The crisis. 



viii Contents 

PAGE 

The Civil War 183 

The North and South in 1860. Fort Sumter and 
Bull Kun. Affair of the Trent. Success in the West. 
Merrimac and Monitor. McClellan in Virginia. West- 
ern campaigns. Emancipation of the slaves. The 
great crisis of the war. Chattanooga. Combined 
operations under Grant. End of the war. 

Index 247 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Thomas Jefferson Frontispiece 

Photogravure after the crayon portrait by St. Memin, 
with autograph 

Expansion Map of the United States 4 

Inauguration of Washington as President 9 

From a History of United States published in 1820 

Alexander Hamilton 12 

After the miniature portrait by Robertson, with auto- 
graph 

Anthony Wayne 17 

After the portrait sketch by Trumbull, with autograph 

Autograph of Genet 21 

John Jay 22 

After the portrait by Stuart, with autograph 

John Adams 25 

After the portrait by Stuart, with autograph 

Autograph of Talleyrand 26 

Truxtun Medal 27 

Napoleon 29 

After the portrait by Delaroche, with autograph 

George Washington 35 

After the portrait by Stuart 

The Tomb of Washington 38 

After an old sketch 



X Illustrations 

I'AUE 

Mount Vernon 40 

From a print published in 1798 

Autograph of Washington 42 

Mrs. Washington 45 

After the portrait by Stuart 

Mount Vernon 46 

From a recent photograph 

Charles Cotesworth Pinckney 51 

After the miniature portrait by Malbone, with auto- 
graph 

Thomas Jefferson 53 

After the portrait by Stuart 

John Marshall 56 

After the portrait by Inman, witli autograph 

Meriwether Lewis 59 

After the portrait by Peale, with autograph 

William Clark 60 

After the portrait by Peale, with autograph 

Meriwether Lewis 61 

After the drawing by St. Memin 

Tripoli Medal 63 

George Clinton 65 

After the portrait by Ames, with autograph 

Aaron Burr QQ 

After the portrait by Stuart, with autograph 

Washington at the Beginning of the Last Century ... 70 
From an early print 

Rufus King 70 

After the portrait by Stuart, with autograph 



Illustrations xi 

PAGE 

James Madison 79 

After the portrait by Stuart, with autograph 

DeWitt Clintou 80 

After the portrait by Trumbull, with autograph 

Captain Isaac Hull 82 

From the portrait published in the Analectlc Maga- 
zine, 1815 

Bainbridge Medal 83 

The Chesapeake and Shannon 84 

From a print published in 1815 

The Enterprise and Boxer 85 

From a print published in 1815 

The Constitution 87 

From a print published in 1815 

Engraved Title-Page for the Naval Monument .... 89 
Published in 1815 celebrating the victories of the 
American navy 

William Hull 91 

After the portrait by Stuart, with autograph 

Oliver H. Perry 93 

After the portrait by Jarvis, with autograph 

Two Views of Perry's Victory 95 

From prints published in 1815 

Thomas Macdonough , . . 97 

After the portrait by Jarvis, with autograph 

Andrew Jackson 99 

After the portrait by Jarvis 

The Capitol at Washington after being burned by the 

British 100 

From an old print 



xii Illustrations 

PAGE 

James Monroe lUt) 

After the portrait by Stuart, \Yilli autograph 

Robert Fulton Ill 

After the portrait by West, witli autograph 

Eli Whitney 113 

After the portrait by King, with autograph 

The Locks at Lockport on the Eiie Canal 117 

From prints published in 1838 

Thomas H. Benton 121 

After a daguerreotype, with autograph 

John Quiucy Adams 123 

After tlie ijortrait by Durand, with autograph 

Henry Clay 125 

After a daguerreotype, with autograph 

The Mohawk and Hudson Railroad, 1831 129 

Redrawn from an old sketch 

Daniel Webster 131 

After a daguerreotype, with autograph 

William Lloyd Garrison 133 

After a photograph, with autograph 

Andrew Jackson 137 

After the drawing by Longacre, with autograph 

Martin Van Buren 130 

After a photograph, with autograph 

William Henry Harrison 140 

After the portrait by Lambdin, with autograph 

John Tyler 142 

After a daguerreotype, with autograph 

Sam Houston 145 

After a daguerreotype, with autograph 



Illustrations xiii 

PAGE 

James K. Polk 147 

Afler the portrait by Healey, with autograph 

Winfield Scott 153 

After the portrait by Weir, with autograph 

James Russell Lowell 155 

After a photograph, with autograph 

Zachary Taylor 157 

After a daguerreotype, with autograph 

Millard Fillmore ICO 

After a photograph, with autograph 

Harriet Beecher Stowe 101 

After the drawing by Kichinond, with autograph 

Franklin Pierce 1G4 

After the portrait by Healey, with autograph 

Stephen A. Douglas 107 

After a photograph, with autograph 

Charles Sumner 170 

After a photograph, with autograph 

James Buchanan 172 

After a daguerreotype, with autograph 

John Brown . . 170 

After a photograph, with autograph 

John C. Breckinridge . . 178 

After a daguerreotype, with autograph 

Napoleon III 187 

After the portrait by Winterhalter, with autograph 

Jefferson C. Davis 189 

After a photograph, with autograph 

Alexander H. Stephens 192 

After a photograph, with autograph 



xiv Illuistratloiis 

PAGE 

Abraham Lincoln 193 

After a photograph, with autograph 

Fort Sumter after the Bombardment 195 

After a photograph 

Montgomery, Alabama, February 8, 1861 196 

From a contemporary print 

Confederate Capitol at Richmond 197 

From a print 

George B. McClellan 199 

After a photograph, with autograpli 

A. Sidney Johnston 204 

After a photograph, with autograph 

Ulysses S. Grant 205 

From a photograph, with autograph 

David G. Farragut ... 209 

After a photograph, with autograph 

John Ericsson 211 

After a photograph, with autograph 

John C. Fremont 213 

After a photograph, with autograph 

Joseph E. Johnston . . 215 

After a photograph, with autograph 

John Pope 217 

After a photograph, with autograph 

Henry W. Halleck 219 

After a photograph, witii autograph 

Don Carlos Buell 220 

After a photograph, with autograph 

William S. Ro.secrans 221 

After a photograph, with autograph 



Illustrations xv 

PAGE 

General Bragg 223 

After a photograph 

Joseph Hooker 227 

After a photograph, with autograph 

Tliomas J. Jackson (" Stonewall" Jackson) 229 

After a photograph, with autograph 

George G. Meade 231 

After a photograph, with autograph 

George H. Thomas 233 

After a photograph, with autograph 

William T. Sherman 235 

After a photograph, with autograph 

Robert E. Lee .237 

After a photograph, with autograph 

General Hood 241 

After a photograph 

Philip H. Sheridan 243 

After a photograph, with autograph 



THE PERIOD OF WEAKNESS 



THE PERIOD OF WEAKNESS 

Couditions of American progress. Hamilton's measures. 
Whisky insurrection. Indian War. Kise of parties. "Cit- 
izen" Genet. Jay's treaty. Troubles with France. Alien 
and sedition laws. Kentucky and Virginia resolutions. 
Death of Washington. Downfall of the Federalist party. 
The Louisiana Purchase. E.xploration of Oregon. The 
Tripolitau War. Burr and Hamilton. Embargo. 

The nation over wliicli George Washington 
was called to preside in 1780 was a third-rate 
power, inferior in population and wealth to 
Holland, for example, and about on a level 
with Portugal or Denmark. The population, 
numbering less than four million, was thinly 
scattered throusrh the thirteen states between 
the Atlantic and the Alleghenies, beyond which 
mountainous barrier a few hardy pioneers were 
making the beginnings of Tennessee, Ken- 
tucky, and Ohio. Roads were few and bad, 
none of the great rivers were bridged, mails 
were irregular. There were few manufac- 
tures. There were many traders and merchant 



6 How the United States became a Nation 

seamen in the coast towns of the north, but the 
great majority of the people were farmers who 
Hved on- tlie produce of their own estates and 
seldom undertook long journeys. Hence the 
different parts of the country knew very lit- 
tle about each other, and entertained absurd 
prejudices; and the sentiment of union be- 
tween the states was extremely weak. East 
of the Alleghenies the red man had ceased 
to be dangerous, but tales of Indian massacre 
still came from regions no more remote than 
Ohio and Georgia. By rare good fortune and 
consummate diplomacy the United States had 
secured, at the peace of 1783, all the terri- 
tory as far as the Mississippi river, but all 
the vast regions beyond, together with the 
important city of New Orleans at its mouth, 
belonged to Spain, the European power which 
most cordially hated us. The only other 
power which had possessions in North America 
was England, from which we had lately won 
our independence. The feeling entertained 
toward us in England was one of mortifica- 
tion and chagrin, accompanied by a hope that 



TJie Period of Weakness 7 

our half-formed Union would fall in pieces 
and its separate states be driven by disaster 
to beg to be taken back into the British em- 
pire. The rest of Europe knew little about 
the United States and cared less. 

This country, however, which seemed so in- 
significant beside the great powers of Europe, 
contained within itself the germs of an indus- 
trial and political development far greater 
than anything the world had ever seen. The 
American population was settled upon a terri- 
tory much more than capable of supporting it. 
The natural resources of the country were so 
vast as to create a steady demand for labor 
far greater than ordinary increase of popula- 
tion could supply. This is still the case, and 
for a long time will continue to be the case. 
It is this simple economic fact which has 
always been at the bottom of the wonderful 
growth of the United States. But it was very 
necessary that the nation should be provided 
with such a government as would enable it 
to take full advantaere of this fact. It was 
necessary first, that the Federal government 



8 IIoio the United States hecavie a Nation 

should be strong enough to preserve peace 
at home and make itself respected abroad ; 
secondly., that local self-government should be 
maintained in every part of the Union; thirdly, 
that there should be absolute free trade be- 
tween the states. These three great ends our 
Federal Constitution has secured. The requi- 
site strength in the central government was, 
indeed, not all actpiired in a moment. It took 
a second war with England in 1812-1815 to 
convince foreign nations that the American 
flag could not be insulted with impunity ; and 
it took the terrible Civil War of 18G1-18G5 to 
prove tliat (jiir government was too strong to 
be overthrown l)y the most formidable domes- 
tic combination that could possibly be brought 
against it. The result of both these wars has 
been to diminish the probable need for further 
wars on the part of the United States. In 
spite of these and other minor contests, our 
Federal Constitution for a century kept the 
American Union in such profound peace as 
was never seen before in any part of the earth 
since men began to live upon its surface. 



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Inauguration of Washington as Pkesident 

From a print imblished in ltS2U 

9 



The Period of Weakness 11 

Local self-government and free trade within 
the limits of the Union were not interfered 
with. As a result, we were able to profit 
largely by our natural advantages, so that 
the end of our first century of national exist- 
ence found us the strongest and richest nation 
in the world. 

For these blessings, in so far as they are 
partly the work of wise statesmanship, a large 
share of our gratitude is due to the adminis- 
tration of George Washington. The problem 
before that administration was to organize the 
government upon the lines laid down in the 
Constitution, so that its different departments 
would work smoothly together. This difficult 
work was so successfully accomplished that 
little change has been found necessary from 
that day to this. The success was mainly 
due to the organizing genius of Hamilton 
in the cabinet, assisted by the skill and tact 
of Madison as leading member of the House 
of Representatives. Though these great men 
were often opposed to each other in regard to 
special measures, their work all tended toward 



12 How the United States became a Nation 

a common result. Hamilton, as Secretary of 
the Treasury, occupied the most important 




position in Washington's cabinet. The first 
thing to be done was to restore the credit of 
the United States, which had been completely 



The Period of Weakness 13 

ruined during the Revolutionary War and the 
troubled years which followed it. Hamilton 
proposed three measures : first, that the gov- 
ernment should assume the foreign debt of the 
confederation, and pay it in full ; secondly, 
that the domestic debt, which seemed to have 
been virtually repudiated, should likewise be 
assumed and paid ; thirdly, that the debts of 
the separate states should also be assumed 
and paid by the Federal government. The 
first of these measures met with no opposi- 
tion. The second was opposed on the ground 
that it would only benefit speculators who had 
bought up United States securities at a dis- 
count ; but Hamilton's friends argued. Let us 
teach people who hold government securities 
hereafter not to sell them at a discount; and 
so the measure was carried. The third meas- 
ure met with violent opposition, for many peo- 
ple thought the Federal government had no 
legal power to assume a state debt. No doubt 
it was a somewhat heroic measure. There 
was a fierce and bitter fight over it, which 
at last was only settled by what in political 



14 How the United States became a Nation 

slang is called " logrolling," or an exchange 
of favors. The site for a Federal capital was 
to be selected. The northern people generally 
wished to have it not farther south than the 
Delaware river, while the southerners were de- 
termined not to have it farther north than the 
Potomac. Jefferson, who was Washington's 
Secretary of State, was prominent in urging 
the southern view of this question, as well 
as in opposing the assumption of the state 
debts. The two controversies were settled by 
a bargain between Jefferson and Hamilton, 
in which the former withdrew his opposi- 
tion to assumption, while the latter used his 
influence with the Federalist party in favor 
of the Potomac as a site for the Federal capi- 
tal. The assumption of state debts was a 
master stroke of policy. All those persons 
to whom any state owed money were at once 
won over to the support of the Federal gov- 
ernment. There were many such persons, 
and many of them were wealthy and power- 
ful. All these now felt a common interest in 
upholding the national credit, which, through 



The Period of Weakness 15 

these wise and vigorous measures of Hamil- 
ton, was soon completely restored. 

In order to carry out these measures, money 
was necessary, and this must be raised by Fed- 
eral taxation. There were two ways in which 
this could be done, either by internal taxes or 
by customhouse duties. The latter method 
was mainly resorted to, because it is more 
indirect, and while it takes vastly more money 
out of people's pockets, they are usually too 
dull to realize this as they would in the case 
of a direct tax. When a tax is wrapped up 
in the extra fifty cents paid to a merchant 
for a yard of foreign cloth, it is so effectually 
hidden that most people do not know it is 
there. Hence this method of taxation is dan- 
gerous ; it enables taxes to be laid for the 
benefit of greedy manufacturers, and thus 
furtively takes from the people vast sums 
of money which never get into the treasury. 
This sort of thing is called ''protection," which 
is so pleasing a word that it makes many peo- 
ple loath to see taxes reduced. In Hamilton's 
time these dangers were not so well understood 



16 IIoic the United States became a Nation 

as they are now. But the most indirect and 
covert method of taxation was the one that 
must needs be adopted, because jjeople had 
not been used to paying taxes except to their 
t(jwn, county, and state governments, and 
wouhl be likely to rebel against taxes too 
directly demanded for the Federal treasury. 

An instance of this was furnished in 1794 
by the tax on wliisky. Tlie settlers in the 
mountains of Pennsylvania and Virginia had 
long since found that it cost more to carry 
their corn and wheat to market tlian they 
could sell it for, and accordingly they dis- 
tilled it into whisky. When Congress now 
laid a tax upon whisky, they grumbled, and 
when the revenue officers called upon them, 
they refused to pay the tax and threatened 
to take up arms. It was necessary to show 
people that such proceedings would not be 
allowed ; and Washington summarily sup- 
pressed the insurrection by sending to the 
disaffected region an ami}' of sixteen thou- 
sand men, — a force so large as to make the 
mere idea of resistance ridiculous. 



The Period of Weakness 



17 



Then, as ordinarily, the western frontier was 
the scene of troubles with the Indians. This 
frontier was then near the Wabash river. In 




1790 the red men won a great victory over 
General Harmar near the site of Fort Wayne, 
and in the following year they inflicted a terrible 



18 How the United States became a Nation 

defeat upon General St. Clair near the head 
waters of the Wabash. They now tried to 
make a treaty which should exclude white 
settlers from tliis region. But in 1794, in 
a fierce battle near the site of Toledo, they 
were totally defeated by General Wayne, and 
were forced to make a treaty by which they 
were moved farther west. 

The divisions between political parties had 
now become strongly marked. People were 
first divided into two great national parties in 
the autumn of 1787, when the question was 
whether the Federal Constitution should be 
ratified by the states. These first parties were 
called Federalist and Anti-Federalist, names 
which explain themselves. The adoption of 
the Constitution was a decisive defeat for the 
Anti-Federalist party; the financial measures 
of Hamilton completed its destruction. Par- 
ties then became divided in the only sound 
and healthy way possible in a free country, 
namely, into those who wished to extend, 
and those w^ho wished to limit, the powers of 
government. Tlie former kept the name of 



The Period of Weakness 19 

Federalists, the second received the name of 
Democratic-Republicans. They preferred to 
be called Republicans, while their enemies 
tried to call them Democrats, an epithet which 
was then supposed to convey a stigma. Until 
about 1825-1830 the correct name for this 
party is Republican ; after that time it is right 
to speak of it as the Democratic party. The 
reader must bear in mind the awkward fact 
that in American politics at the beginning of 
the century the name Republican meant ex- 
actly the opposite to wliat it means now. So 
far as the word goes, it might as well have been 
apphed to one party as the other; American 
party names have but little descriptive signifi- 
cance anyway. But at the outset the name 
Democrat really had a meaning. It was prop- 
erly applied to those who wished to increase 
the direct participation of the people in the gov- 
ernment, to abolish all remnants of privilege, 
and to extend the suffrage which at that time 
was more or less limited in all the states. The 
founder and greatest leader of the Republi- 
can party, Thomas Jefferson, was before all 



20 IIoio the United States became a Nation 

men a Democrat. In the highest intellectual 
qualities he was inferior to Hamilton and 
Madison; but he excelled them in a certain 
generosity of intelligence which enabled him 
to see that no form of government can be suc- 
cessful in the long run, if it leaves any class 
of people with the feeling that they are forci- 
bly deprived of a share in the management 
of things. Jefferson's opponent, the leader of 
the Federalists, was Hamilton. Between the 
two parties Washington pursued a national 
policy of his own, though his sympathies were 
mainly with the Federalists. 

A fii-m hand and indomitable will like 
Washington's were needed at this time, for 
the foreign sympathies of our two parties were 
so strong that we were continually running 
the risk of getting dragged into war. Party 
quarrels were concerned even more with Euro- 
pean politics than with American affairs. The 
French Revolution broke out in the first year 
of Washington's first term (1780) ; by the 
second year of his second term it had reached 
its most frightful period. France and England 



The Period of Weakness 21 

were now at Wcar. The Republicans realized 
the good in the French Revolution so far as to 
sympathize with it in spite of its horrors. The 
Federalists sympathized with England as the 
upholder of law and order in Europe. Party 
strife has never run so high, except just before 
our Civil War. The French expected us to help 
them in their war against England, and in 1793 




AnTOGu.vi'H OF Genet 

they sent over a minister to the United States 
to persuade us to do so. This man, who was 
called " Citizen" Genet, behaved as if he owned 
the United States. He tried, without waiting 
for permission, to fit out privateers in American 
ports, and thus drag us into war with England. 
Many Republicans were disposed to uphold 
him in everything, but his insolence presently 
disgusted his own supporters. Washington 
sternly checked his proceedings, and at length 



22 IIoiv the United States became a Nation 

complained of him to the French govern- 
ment, which thought it best to recall him. 




In 1795 Washington had one of his hardest 
trials. Since the peace of 1783 England had 
treated us as shabbily as she knew how. She 



The Period of Weakness 23 

still held Detroit and other frontier forts, in 
disregard of the treaty, and it was believed 
that the British commandants had secretly 
helped the Indians on the Wabash. British 
war ships, moreover, were in the habit of im- 
pressing American seamen and seizing Amer- 
ican ships bound to or from French ports. 
War might easily grow out of this, and to 
prevent such a calamity Washington sent 
John Jay on a special mission to England. 
Jay negotiated a treaty which only partially 
secured the American claims, but Washing- 
ton's government wisely adopted it as prefer- 
able to war. There was great excitement 
everywhere ; Hamilton was stoned on the 
street, and scurrilous newspapers heaped abuse 
upon Washington, calling him "the stepfather 
of his country." 

As Washington refused to be a candidate 
for a third term, the election of 1796 was 
warmly contested by the two parties. John 
Adams, the Federalist candidate, was elected 
over Jefferson, who, according to the rule at 
that time, became Vice President, as second 



24 How the United States became a Nation 

on tlie list. This was an unwise rule, since 
under it the deatli of the President might 
reverse the result of the election. The ad- 
ministration of John Adams was chiefly occu- 
pied with disputes with France. The French 
were indignant at our attitude of neutral- 
ity, and treated us with intolerable insolence. 
Under Washington's administration, Gouver- 
neur Morris, a Federalist, had been for some 
time minister to France, but as he was greatly 
disliked by tlie gang of anarchists that then 
misruled that country, Washington had re- 
called him and sent James Monroe, a Repub- 
lican, in his place. Monroe was instructed to 
try to reconcile the French to Jay's treaty, 
but instead of this he encouraged them to 
hope that the treaty would not be ratified. 
Washington accordingly recalled him and sent 
Cotesworth Pinckney, a Federalist, in his place. 
The French government were so enraged at 
the ratification of Jay's treaty that they 
would not allow Pinckney to stay in Paris, 
and at the same time decrees were passed 
discriminating against American commerce. 



The Period of Weakness 



25 



The first act of Mr. Adams was to call an 
extra session of Congress to consider how 
war with France was to be avoided. A spe- 
cial commission was sent to Paris, but the 




government theye would not receive the com- 
missioners. Prince Talleyrand had the im- 
pudence to send secret emissaries to them to 
demand a large sum of money as blackmail, 



26 How the United States became a Nation 

to be paid to several members of the French 
government on condition of their stopping 
the outrages upon American commerce. The 
indignant envoys sent home to America an 
account of this infamous proposal, and Mr. 
Adams laid the dispatches before Congress, 
substituting the letters X. Y. Z. for the names 
of Talleyrand's emissaries. Hence these 
papers have ever since been known as the 

Amtoguaph of Talleyrand 

" X. Y. Z. dispatches." They were published, 
and aroused intense excitement on both sides 
of the- Atlantic. The United States pre- 
pared for war. For the moment the Repub- 
lican party seemed overwhelmed. From all 
quarters went up the war cry, " Millions for 
defense; not one cent for tribute." A few 
excellent frigates were built ; an army was 
raised, and Washington was placed in com- 
mand with the rank of lieutenant general. 
It was during this excitement that the song 



The Period of Weakness 



27 




Truxtun Medal 



of " Hail Columbia " was published. For 
about a year there was really war with France, 
though it was never declared. In February, 
1799, Captain Truxtun, in the frigate Con- 
stellation, defeated and captured the French 
frigate L'Insurgente near the island of St. 
Christopher. In February, 1800, the same 
gallant officer in a desperate battle destroyed 
the frigate La Vengeance, which was much 
his superior in strength of armament. The 
French, seeing our warlike attitude, had 
already, early in 1799, grown somewhat 
more civil. Talleyrand tried to disavow the 
X.Y.Z. affair, and made conciliatory overtures 
to Vans Murray, the American minister at The 



28 Hoio the United States became a Nation 

Hague. President Adams wisely decided to 
meet tbe Freucli governmeut halfway, and 
accordingly, in spite of the fiercely warlike 
temper of the Federalist party, he appointed 
Vans Murray minister to France, and sent over 
two commissioners to aid him in adjusting the 
difficulties. When these envoys reached Paris, 
they found Napoleon Bonaparte at the head 
of the government, and succeeded in settling 
everything amicably. The course of John 
Adams, in resisting popular clamor and mak- 
ing peace with France, deserves our highest 
praise. It was one of the noblest actions of 
his life, but it prevented his reelection to the 
presidency. For a long time there had been 
intense jealousy and dislike between Adams 
and the other great Federalist leader, Hamil- 
ton ; and on the occasion of the French mission 
these antagonisms bore fruit in a quarrel be- 
tween Mr. Adams and his cabinet, and presently 
in a split in the Federalist party. 

Another affair contributed largely to the 
downfall of the Federalist party. In 1798, 
during the height of the popular fury against 



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Tlie Period of Weakness 31 

France, the Federalists in Congress presumed 
too much upon their strength, and passed the 
famous alien and sedition acts. By the first 
of these acts aliens were rendered liable to 
summary banishment from the United States 
at the sole discretion of the President ; and 
any alien who should venture to return from 
such banishment was liable to imprisonment 
for life. By the sedition act, any scandalous 
or malicious writing against the President or 
Congress was liable to be dealt with in the 
United States courts and punished by fine 
and imprisonment. This act was unconstitu- 
tional, for it was an infringement upon free- 
dom of the press ; and both acts aroused more 
widespread indignation than any others that 
have ever passed in Congress. 

From the southern Republicans the alien 
and sedition laws called forth a vigorous 
remonstrance. A series of resolutions, drawn 
up by Madison, was adopted in 1798 by the 
Legislature of Virginia, and a similar series, 
still more pronounced in character, and drawn 
up by Jefferson, was adopted in the same 



32 How the United States became a Nation 

year by the Legislature of Kentucky. The 
Virgmia resolutions asserted with truth that, in 
adopting the Federal Constitution, the states 
had surrendered only a limited portion of their 
powers ; and went on to declare that, when- 
ever the Federal government should exceed 
its constitutional authority, it was the busi- 
ness of the state governments to interfere 
and pronounce such action unconstitutional. 
Accordingly, by these resolutions, Virginia 
declared the alien and sedition laws uncon- 
stitutional, and invited the other states to 
join in the. declaration. Not meeting with a 
favorable response, Virginia renewed these 
resolutions the next year. 

There was nothing necessarily seditious, or 
tending toward secession, in the Virginia res- 
olutions ; but the attitude assumed in them 
was uncalled for on the part of any state, 
inasmuch as there existed, in the Federal Su- 
preme Cornet, a tribunal competent to decide 
upon the constitutionality of acts of Congress. 
But tlie Kentucky resolutions went further. 
They declared that our Federal Constitution 



The Period of Weakness 33 

was a compact to which the several states were 
the one party and the Federal government was 
the other, and each party must decide for 
itself as to when the compact was infringed, 
and as to the proper remedy to be adopted. 
When the resolutions were repeated in 1799, 
a clause was added which went still further 
and mentioned "nullification" as the suitable 
remedy, and one which any state might em- 
ploy. This was venturing upon dangerous 
ground ; for if it were once admitted that a 
state might take it upon itself to prevent the 
execution of a United States law within its 
own borders, a long step Avould be made 
toward admitting the right of secession. In 
after times secessionists often appealed to the 
Kentucky resolutions ; but their doctrine was 
never generally admitted, tliough different 
states, north and south, under the influence 
of strong excitement, seemed at times ready 
to act upon it. 

When appointed to command the army, 
July 3, 1798, Washington accepted the com- 
mission upon the express understanding that 



34 HoiD the United States became a Nation 

he was not to be called into the field until an 
emergency should arise which should require 
his presence. During the following year he 
continued to superintend from a distance the 
concerns of the army, as his ample and minute 
correspondence manifests ; and he was at the 
same time earnestly endeavoring to bring the 
affairs of his rural domain into order. A six- 
teen years' absence from home, with short 
intervals, had deranged them considerably, so 
that it required all the time he could spare 
from the usual occupations of life to bring 
them into tune again. It was a period of 
incessant activity and toil, therefore, both 
mental and bodily. He was for hours in his 
study occupied with his pen, and for hours on 
horseback, riding the rounds of his extensive 
estate, visiting the various farms, and super- 
intending and directing the works in opera- 
tion. All this he did with unfailing vigor, 
though now in his sixty-seventh year. 

Occasional reports of the sanguinary con- 
flict that was going on in Europe would reach 
him in the quiet groves of Mount Venion and 




Geokge Washington 

AlttT the painting by Stuart 



oo 



Tke Period of Weakness 37 

awaken his solicitude. "A more destructive 
sword," said lie, "was never drawn, at least 
in modern times, than this war has produced. 
It is time to sheathe it and give peace to 
mankind." A private letter written to the 
Secretary of War bespeaks his apprehensions: 
" I have for some time past viewed the politi- 
cal concerns of the United States with an 
anxious and painful eye. They appear to me 
to be moving by hasty strides to a crisis ; but 
in what it will result, that Being who sees, 
foresees, and directs all things, alone can tell. 
The vessel is afloat, or very nearly so, and 
considering myself as a passenger only, I shall 
trust to the mariners (whose duty it is to 
watch) to steer it into a safe port." 

Winter had set in, December, 1799, with 
occasional wind and rain and frost, yet Wash- 
ington still kept up his active round of in- 
door and outdoor occupations, as his diary 
records. He was in full liealth and vigor, 
dined out occasionally, and had frequent 
guests at Mount Vernon, and, as usual, was 
part of every day in the saddle, going the 



38 How the United States became a Nation 

rounds of his estate, and, in his mihtary 
phraseology, "visiting the outposts." 

He had recently walked with his favorite 
nephew, Lawrence Lewis, about the grounds, 
showing the improvements he intended to 




The Tomb of Washington 

After an old sketch 



make, and had especially pointed out the 
spot where he purposed building a new family 
tomb, the old one being damaged by the roots 
of trees which had overgrown it and caused 
it to leak. "This change," said he, "I shall 
make the first of all, for I may require it 
before the rest." 



The Period of Weakness 39 

" When I parted from him," adds Lewis, 
" he stood on tlie steps of the front door, 
where he took leave of myself and another. 
... It was a bright frosty morning ; he had 
taken his usnal ride, and the clear, healthy 
flnsh on his cheek and his sprightly manner 
brought the remark from both of us that we 
had never seen the general look so well. I 
have sometimes thought him decidedly the 
handsomest man I ever saw ; and when in a 
lively mood, so full of pleasantry, so agree- 
able to all with whom he associated, that 
I could hardly realize he was the same Wash- 
ington whose dignity awed all who approached 
him." 

For some time past Washington had been 
occupied in digesting a complete system on 
which his estate was to be managed for 
several succeeding years, specifying the culti- 
vation of the several farms, with tables desig- 
nating the rotations of the crops. It occupied 
thirty folio pages, and was executed with that 
clearness and method which characterized all 
his business papers. This was finished on the 



40 Hold the United States became a Nation 

10th of December, and was accompanied by a 
letter of tliat date to his manacrer or steward. 
It is a vahiable document, showing the sound- 
ness and vigor of his intellect at this advanced 
stage of life, and the love of order that reigned 




Mount Vernon 

From a print publishetl in 1798 

throughout his affairs. "My greatest anxiety," 
said he, on a previous occasion, " is to have 
all these concerns in such a clear and distinct 
form, that no reproach may attach itself to 
me when I have taken my departure for the 
land of spirits." It was evident, however, 



The Period of Weakness 41 

that full of health and vigor, he looked for- 
ward to his long-cherished hope, — the enjoy- 
ment of a serene old age in this home of 
his heart. 

According to his diary, the morning on which 
these voluminous instructions to his steward 
were dated was clear and calm, but the after- 
noon was lowering. The next day (lltli), he 
notes that there was wind and rain, and " at 
niglit a large circle round the moon.'''' The 
morning of the 12th was overcast. That 
morning he wrote to Hamilton, heartily ap- 
proving of a i^lan for a military academy, 
which the latter had submitted to the Secre- 
tary of War. About ten o'clock he mounted 
his horse and rode out as usual to make the 
rounds of his estate. The ominous ring round 
the moon, which he had observed on the pre- 
ceding night, proved a fatal portent. "About 
one o'clock," he notes, " it began to snow, soon 
after to hail, and then turned to a settled 
cold rain." Having on an overcoat, he con- 
tinued his ride without regarding the weather, 
and did not return to the house until after 



42 How the United States hecame a Nation 

three. His secretary, Tobias Lear, approached 
him with letters to be franked, that they 
might be taken to the post office in the even- 
ing. Washington franked the letters, but 
observed that the weather was too bad to 
send a servant out with them. Mr. Lear per- 
ceived that snow was hanging from his hair, 
and expressed fears that he had got wet ; 
but he replied, No, that his greatcoat had 




Autograph of Washington 

kept him dry. As dinner had been waiting 
for him he sat down without changing his 
clothes. ''In the evening," writes his secre- 
tary, ''he appeared as well as usual." 

On the following morning the snow was 
three inches deep and still falling, which pre- 
vented him from taking his usual ride. He 
complained of a sore throat, and had evidently 
taken cold the day before. In the afternoon 
the weather cleared up, and he went out on 



Tlie Period of Weakness 43 

the grounds between the house and the river 
to mark some trees which were to be cut 
down. A hoarseness which had hung about 
him through the day grew worse towards 
night, but he made light of it. 

He was very cheerful in the evening as he 
sat in the parlor with Mrs. Washington and 
Mr. Lear, amusing himself with the papers 
which had been brought from the post office. 
When he met with anything interesting or 
entertaining, he would read it aloud as well 
as his hoarseness would permit, or he lis- 
tened and made occasional comments while 
Mr. Lear read the debates of the Virginia 
Assembly. On retiring to bed, Mr. Lear sug- 
gested that he should take something to re- 
lieve the cold. ''No," replied he ; "you know 
I never take anything for a cold. Let it go 
as it came." 

In the night he was taken extremely ill 
with ague and difficulty of breathing. Be- 
tween two and three o'clock in the morning 
he awoke Mrs. Washington, who would have 
risen to call a servant; but he would not 



44 Hoiv the United Slates became a Nation 

permit her, lest she should take cold. At day- 
break, when the servant woman entered to 
make a lire, she was sent to call Mr. Lear. 
He found the general breathing with difficulty, 
and hardly able to utter a word intelligibly. 

His old friend, Dr. Craik, soon arrived, and 
two other physicians were called in. Various 
remedies were tried, but without avail. In 
the course of tlie afternoon he appeared to be 
in great pain and distress from the difficulty 
of breathing, and frequently changed his pos- 
ture. Between five and six o'clock he was 
assisted to sit up in his bed. " I feel I am 
going," said he ; '' I thank you for your atten- 
tions, but I pray you will take no more trouble 
about me ; let me go oif (piietly ; I cannot last 
long." 

Between ten and eleven o'clock he expired 
without a struggle or a sigli. 

On opening his will, which he had handed 
to Mrs. Washington shortly before death, it 
was found to have been carefully drawn up 
by himself in the preceding July ; and by an 
act in conformity with his whole career, one 



The Period of Weakness 



45 



of its first provisions directed the emancipa- 
tion of liis slaves on the decease of his wife. 
It had long been hi^ earnest wish that the 
slaves held by him in his own right should 
receive their freedom during his life, but he 
had found it would be attended with insuper- 




Mrs. Washington 

able difficulties on account of their intermix- 
ture by marriage with the " dower negroes," 
whom it was not in his power to manumit 
under the tenure by wliich they were held. 
With provident benignity he also made pro- 
vision in his will for such as were to receive 
their freedom under this device, but who, from 
age, bodily infirmities, or infancy, might be 



46 HoLv the United States hecmne a Natiori 

unable to support themselves, and he expressly 
forbade, under any pretense whatsoever, the 
sale or transportation out of Virginia of 
any slave of whom he might die possessed. 
Though born and educated a slaveholder, this 




Mount Vernon 

From a recent photograph 



was all in consonance with feelings, senti- 
ments, and principles which he had long en- 
tertained. In a letter to Mr. John Mercer, in 
September, 1786, he writes: "I never mean, 
unless some particular circumstances should 



The Period of Weakness 47 

compel me to it, to possess another slave by 
purchase, it being among my first wishes to 
see some plan adopted by which slavery in 
this country may be abolished by law." And 
eleven years afterwards, in August, 1797, he 
writes to his nephew, Lawrence Lewis, in a 
letter which we have had in our hands, " I 
wish from my soul that the Legislature of 
this state could see the policy of a gradual 
abolition of slavery. It might prevent much 
future mischief." 

A deep sorrow spread over the nation on 
hearing that Washington was no more. Con- 
gress, which was in session, immediately ad- 
journed for the day. The next morning it was 
resolved that the Speaker's chair be shrouded 
with black; that the members and officers of 
the House wear black during the session; and 
that a joint committee of both houses be 
appointed to consider the most suitable man- 
ner of doing honor to the memory of the 
man " first in war, first in j^eace, and first 
in the hearts of his fellow-citizens." Pub- 
lic testimonials of grief and reverence were 



48 How the United States became a Nation 

displayed in every part of the Union. Nor 
were these sentiments confined to the United 
States. When the news of Washington's death 
reached England, Lord Bridport, who had com- 
mand of a British fleet of nearly sixty sail of 
the line, lying at Torhay, lowered his flag 
half-mast, every ship following the example ; 
and Bonaparte, First Consnl of France, on 
announcing his death to the army, ordered 
that Ijlack crape should be suspended from 
all the standards and flags throughout the 
public service for ten days. 

The character of Washington may want 
some of those poetical elements which dazzle 
and delight the multitude, but it possessed 
fewer inequalities and a rarer union of vir- 
tues than perhaps ever fell to the lot of any 
other man, — prudence, firmness, sagacity, 
moderation, an overruling judgment, an im- 
movable justice, courage that never faltered, 
patience that never wearied, truth that dis- 
dained all artifice, magnanimity without al- 
loy. It seems as if Providence had endowed 
him in a preeminent degree with the qualities 



The Period of Weakness 49 

requisite to fit him for the high destiny he 
was called upon to fulfill, — to conduct a 
momentous revolution which was to form an 
era in the history of the world, and to inaugu- 
rate a new and untried government, which, 
to use his own words, was to lay the founda- 
tion " for the enjoyment of much purer civil 
liberty and greater public happiness than have 
hitherto been the portion of mankind." 

The fame of Washington stands apart from 
every other in history, shining Avith a truer 
luster and a more benignant glory. With us 
his memory remains a national property, where 
all sympathies throughout our widely extended 
and diversified empire meet in unison. Under 
all dissensions and amid all the storms of 
party his precepts and example speak to us 
from the grave with a paternal appeal ; and 
his name — by all revered — forms a univer- 
sal tie of Ijrotherhood, — a watchword of our 
Union. 

"■ It will be the duty of the historian and 
the sage of all nations," writes the eminent 
British statesman, Lord Brougham, '' to let 



50 HoiD the United States became a Nation 

no occasion pass of commemorating this illus- 
trious man ; and until time shall be no more, 
will a test of the progress which our race has 
made in wisdom and virtue, be derived from 
the veneration paid to the immortal name of 
Washington." 

By the spring of 1800 it became apparent 
that the Republicans were steadily gaining 
ground. In April the New York state elec- 
tion went against the Federalists. Soon after 
this the President dismissed some of his cab- 
inet ofhcers who were too friendly to Hamilton, 
and the break in the Federalist party became 
irreparaljle. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney was 
the second choice of that party for President, 
and the Hamiltonians tried to divert votes to 
him from Adams. The election was very close. 
Of the electoral votes seventy-three were for 
Jefferson, seventy-three for Aaron Burr, sixty- 
five for Adams, sixty-four for Pinckney, and 
one for Jay. As there was no name highest 
on the list, it was left to the House of Repre- 
sentatives to decide between the two highest 
candidates. Intrigues followed. Some of the 



The Period of Weakness 



51 



Federalists wished to elect Burr instead of 
their archenemy Jefferson ; but Hamilton used 




all his influence against such a scheme, and 
at last, on February 17, 1801, Jefferson was 
elected by the House. In another fortnight 



52 How the United States became a Nation 

the government would have been left with- 
out any executive head. There were fears of 
anarchy and threats of civil war. To provide 
against the recurrence of such a difficulty, 
the twelfth amendment to the Constitution, 
adopted in 1804, changed the method of con- 
ducting presidential elections to that which 
has ever since been employed. 

The inauguration of Jefferson was the first 
that took place in the city of Washington, 
whither the Federal government had been 
removed from Philadelphia in 1800. The 
national capital, which is now fast becoming 
one of the finest cities in the world, was then 
a wretched village in the woods. Mau}^ of 
the Federalists believed that the election of 
Jefferson would entail speedy ruin upon the 
country ; but such fears proved groundless, 
as usual. His first administration was marked 
by national prosperity. It coincided with the 
only interval of peace between England and 
France during the Napoleonic period, and for 
the moment we were unmolested by those 
powers. There was no serious change in the 




Thomas Jefferson 

After the painting by Stuart 



53 



The Period of Weakness 55 

administration of our government. Jeffer- 
son pardoned those persons who had been im- 
prisoned under the alien and sedition laws, 
and the Republican House of Representatives 
impeached Judge Chase of Maryland for 
alleo-ed harshness in conducting; trials under 
those laws ; but he was acquitted Ijy a Repulj- 
lican Senate. Very few removals from office 
were made for political reasons. The Supreme 
Court, under the lead of Chief Justice John 
Marsliall, remained Federalist in complexion, 
and during the next quarter of a century did 
work of imperishable renown in strengthening 
and interpreting the Constitution. The Re- 
publicans had become reconciled to many 
Federalist ideas which at first they had con- 
demned, and now that the government was 
in their own hands they were not so jealous 
of its powers. 

This was shown in what w\as incomparably 
the greatest event of Jefferson's administra- 
tion. The population of the United States 
was rapidly increasing and was begiiming to 
pour into the Mississippi A'alley. In 1802 



5G IIow the United States became a Nation 

the state of Ohio was admitted into the 
Union ; Mississippi and Indiana were already 
organized as territories • and a growing interest 




was felt in the western country. It was 
now learned that France had just acquired by 
treaty from Spain the territory of Louisiana, 



The Period of Weakness 57 

so that the mouth of the Mississippi river 
and all the vast region to the west of it as 
far as the Rocky mountains had passed into 
the hands of an active and aa^ffressive Euro- 
pean power. Napoleon had, indeed, acquired 
this territory with a vague intention of re- 
gain iug the ascendency in America, which 
France had lost in the Seven Years' War; 
but in 180;] the prospect of renewed war 
with Euglaud made liini change his mind. 
Witli her control of Canada and her superior 
fleet England might easily wrest from his 
grasp the two ends of the Mississippi river 
and defeat his schemes. It seemed better to 
put Louisiana out of England's reach by sell- 
ing it to the United States ; and accordingly 
Jefferson found no difficulty in buying it of 
Napoleon for fifteen million dollars. By this 
great stroke the area of the United States 
was more than doubled. Before 18()3 it was 
827,844 square miles ; Jefferson's purchase 
added to it about 900,000 square miles, out of 
which have since been formed the states of 
Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, 



58 How the United States became a Nation 

Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Mon- 
tana, and Wyoming ; also Indian Territory and 
Oklahoma, and a great jmrt of the states of 
Minnesota and Colorado. The effect of this 
great acquisition of territory, by such an active 
and prosperous people as the Americans, was 
to insure tliem the ultimate control of the 
continent without the need of any foreign 
warfare worth mentioning. It presently set 
us free for an indefinite length of time from 
European complications ; but, on the other 
hand, it added new and formidable features 
to the rivalry between the free states and 
the slave states. 

In making this purchase, which was des- 
tined to exercise such profound influence 
upon the history of the United States, Jeffer- 
son did not pretend that he had constitutional 
authority for what he was doing. The act 
was so clearly for the public good that he 
assumed the responsibility, trusting that a 
new constitutional amendment would justify 
it ; but he was so completely upheld by pub- 
lic sentiment that no such elaborate step was 



TJie Period of Weakness 



59 



thought necessary ; the universal acquiescence 
was enough. 

As an expander of American dominion, 
Jefferson did not stop here. The region beyond 




G^:jeypT^'-^i-^ 



the Rocky mountains and north of California 
was then quite unexplored. In 1804 Jeffer- 
son sent an expedition under captains Meri- 
wether Lewis and William Clark, which 



60 How the United States hecame a Nation 

explored the valley of the Columbia river as 
far as the Pacific ocean, and thus gave us a 
title to Oregon, though many years elapsed 
before we took possession. 




The Barbary states on the Mediterranean 
coast of Africa had been for more than four 
centuries a nuisance to the civilized world. 
Their pirate cruisers swarmed upon tlie high 



ittWv.^ v-";ft;vfrwV*yy.V'\f', 




MiiRiwETiiKR Lewis 

From a print in the AiialiCtif Mar,a-iw (ISI.n) reproducing the drawing by 
St. Merain, which belonged to Captain Clark 



The Period of Weakness 



63 



seas and robbed the merchant ships of all 
nations. Important captives they held for 
ransom, and all others they sold into hope- 
less slavery. Enropean war ships often pun- 
ished them, but were unable to put down the 




Tripoli Medal 

evil ; and the greatest nations had tried to 
bribe them to keep the peace by paying black- 
mail. The United States had at first felt 
obliged to adopt this humiliating policy, but 
at length our patience was exhausted. A 
small fleet was sent to the Mediterranean 



64 How the United States became a Nation 

and bombarded Tripoli. After a desultory 
warfare extending over two years Tripoli sued 
for peace ; and, the British navy presently fol- 
lowing our example, a few years more saw the 
end of this abominable nuisance. 

Tlie popularity of Jefferson's administration 
was shown in the elections of 1804. When he 
was nominated for reelection, George Clinton 
was nominated with him for the vice presi- 
dency, instead of Burr, who in 1801 had 
shown too much readiness to intriu;ue with 
Federalists. Cotesworth Pinckney and Rufus 
King were the Federalist candidates. The 
election was not a close one like the election 
of 1800. Out of 176 electoral votes the Fed- 
eralists received only 14, and in both houses 
of Congress the Republican majority was over- 
whelming. After the nominations, but before 
the election, the country was shocked by a 
dreadful tragedy. The disappointed Burr had 
tried, with Federalist help, to succeed Clinton 
as governor of New York, but was defeated. 
Here, as before in 1801, Hamilton had used 
his influence against him, and now, in a fit of 



The Period of Weakness 65 

desperation, Burr determined to get rid of this 
enemy. He contrived, in July, 1804, to force 
Hamilton into a duel, in which the latter ^vas 




slain. The mourning of the country over the 
loss of this great man was intense, and the 
w^retched Burr found that his public career 
was ruined. After a wild attempt to set up 



66 How the United States hecayne a Nation 




^^/^^^^^ 



a government for himself in the Mississippi 
valley, he was arrested and tried for treason, 
and though acquitted for want of sufficiently 
definite evidence, he became an outcast from 
society. 



The Period of Weakness 67 

Jefferson's second administration was the 
beginning of a stormy period which ended in 
war. Under Washington and Adams we had 
with difficulty been kept from getting drawn 
into the world-wide struggle between England 
and France. Now that strife was renewed on 
such a gigantic scale as to force the whole 
civilized world to take sides. With his famous 
Berlin and Milan decrees, Napoleon sought to 
prevent neutral vessels from entering British 
harbors, while England replied with decrees, 
known as orders in council, forbidding neutral 
vessels to enter the harbors of any nation in 
league with Napoleon or under his leadership. 
The United States, as a prominent maritime 
neutral nation, had obtained a large share of 
the carrying trade, and these decrees wrought 
great injury to American commerce. If an 
American vessel touched at almost any port 
of continental Europe, the first British cruiser 
that came along deemed her its lawful prey ; 
if she touched at a British port, then she 
might expect to be seized by the next French 
craft she should meet. The two greatest 



68 HoiD the United States became a Nation 

naval powers in the world were thus united 
in a wholesale robbery of American ships and 
American merchandise. But England did us 
most harm, because she had more war ships 
and more privateers than France. In another 
respect England possessed a peculiar power 
of annoying us. She claimed and exercised 
the right of stopping the vessels of other 
nations and forcibly taking from them any 
seamen who appeared to be British subjects, 
in order to compel them to serve in the British 
navy. Such a claim on the part of France 
would annoy Americans but little, for no 
one was likely to mistake an American for a 
Frenchman. But to distinguish an American 
from an Englishman was not so easy, and con- 
sequently a great many citizens of the United 
States were impressed into the British service. 
The Revolutionary feeling of hostility to Great 
Britain, which had begun before 1800 to di- 
minish in intensity, was revived and strength- 
ened by these outrages. In 1807 the British 
frigate Leopard, of fifty guns, close to the 
coast of Virginia, fired upon the American 



Tlie Period of Weakness 69 

frigate Chesaj)ealce, of thirty-eight guns, and 
killed or wounded more than twenty men. 
The American ship, being not even prepared 
for action, hauled down her flag, and was 
boarded by the British, who seized four of 
the crew and carried them off to Halifax. 
One of these, who was a British subject, was 
hanged as a deserter ; the other three were 
condemned to death and then reprieved on 
condition of entering the British service. 

At the news of this dastardly outrage the 
whole country Avas thrown into such excite- 
ment as had not been witnessed since the 
battle of Lexington. A cabinet meeting was 
held at Washington, measures were taken for 
procuring military stores and strengthening 
our coast defenses, and the states were called 
upon for one hundred thousand men. But 
the British government avoided war for the 
moment by sending a special envoy to Wash- 
ington to chaffer and procrastinate. The act 
of the Leopard was disavowed, but there was 
no willingness shown to make reparation. 
Feeling unprepared for war, the United States 



70 How the United States became a Nation 

government had recourse to an exceedingly 
stupid and dangerous measure. It hoped to 
browbeat England and France by depriving 
them of our trade, and accordingly in 1807 




Washington at the Beoinning of the Last Century 

From an early print 

there was passed the " embargo act," which 
forbade any vessel to set out from the United 
States for any foreign port. This wonderful 
piece of legislation did more harm to Amer- 
ican commerce than all the cruisers of France 
and England could do ; while as a means of 



TJie Period of Weakness 71 

bringing either of tliese adversaries to reason 
it was quite useless. England, indeed, seemed 
rather to enjoy it, for while it diminished her 
commercial dealings with America, it increased 
her share in the general carrying trade of the 
world. In America the distress was felt most 
severely in New England, and, as usual in those 
days, whenever any part of the country felt 
dissatisfied with the policy of the Federal 
government, threats of secession were heard. 
In 1809 the embargo was repealed, and the 
"non-intercourse act " took its place. This 
act prohibited trade with England and France 
so long as their obnoxious measures should 
be kept in force, but it allowed trade with all 
other countries. It was as ineffectual as the 
embargo, but did not do quite so much harm 
to American commerce. The close of Jeffer- 
son's presidency was thus a season of national 
humiliation. In twenty years our great states- 
men had done a wonderful work in creating 
a government able to make itself respected at 
home ; but it was still too weak, in a mili- 
tary sense, to make itself respected abroad. 



SECOND WAR WITH GREAT 
BRITAIN 



SECOND WAR WITH GREAT BRITAIN 

Strength of the Republicans. Declaration of war. Naval 
victories. The war in the Northwest. The war on the 
Lakes. The war in the South. The treaty of Ghent. 

This humiliating situation of the United 
States was not due to any fault of Jefferson 
or his party, and in the election of 1808 they 
won another great victory, though not quite 
so decisive as in 1804. The Federalist can- 
didates were the same as before, Charles Cotes- 
worth Pinckney and Rufus King; and now 
they obtained forty-seven of the one hundred 
and seventy-six electoral votes. James Mad- 
ison, who had been Secretary of State since 
1801, was elected President, and George Clin- 
ton was reelected to the vice presidency. 
Madison was a political thinker of the highest 
order, and had done more than any other 
man toward constructing our Federal Con- 
stitution. He had been a leading Federal- 
ist, though more moderate than Hamilton or 

75 



76 Hoio the United States heccmie a Nation 

Adams, but had soon taken sides with the 
Repiibhcans. But his intelligence was too 




lAyLlA/J A-vn-Y^? 



broad to allow him to be a mere man of 
party; he was never an out-and-out Repub- 
lican like Jefferson. By 1804 many of the 



Second War with Great Britain 77 

most intelligent Federalists had gone over to 
the Republicans ; and the more rigid-minded 
men who were left, especially in New England, 
made the party more and more narrow and 
sectional, and at length brought it into gen- 
eral discredit. The most notable defection 
from the Federalist party was that of John 
Quincy Adams, about the time of the embargo. 
In 1810 Congress repealed the non-inter- 
course act, which as a measure of intimida- 
tion had accomplished nothing. Congress now 
sought to use the threat of non-intercourse as 
a sort of bribe. It informed England and 
France that if either nation would repeal 
its obnoxious edicts, the non-intercourse act 
would be revived against the other. Napo- 
leon, who was as eminent for lying as for 
figliting, tlien informed the United States 
that he revoked the Berlin and Milan decrees 
as far as American ships were concerned. 
At the same time he gave secret orders by 
which the decrees were to be practically 
enforced as harshly as ever. But the lie 
served its purpose. Congress revived the 



78 How the United States became a Natioji 

non-intercourse act against Great Britain alone, 
and in 1811 hostilities actually began on 
sea and land. On sea the American frigate 
President had an encounter with the British 
sloop Little Belt, and nearly knocked her to 
pieces without suffering any damage. On 
land Tecumseh and his warriors, attacking 
our northwestern settlements with British 
assistance, were defeated at Tippecanoe by 
General Harrison. The growing war feeling 
was shown in the election of Henry Clay of 
Kentucky as Speaker of the House of Repre- 
sentatives, while on the floor of the House 
the leadership fell to John Caldwell Calhoun 
of South Carolina, and in the Senate to Wil- 
liam Crawford of Georgia. Mr. Madison was 
nominated for a second term on condition of 
adopting the war policy; and on June 18, 
1812, war against Great Britain was formally 
declared. Five days later the British govern- 
ment revoked its orders in council ; but this 
concession came too late. The Americans 
had lost all patience, and probably nothing 
short of an abandonment of the right of 



Second War ivith Great Britain 



79 



search on Great Britain's part conld have 
prevented the war. The Federalists of New 
England, however, still opposed the war, and 
of the members of Congress who voted for 




it, three fourths were from the South and 
West. That this Federalist opposition was 
somewhat factious would appear from the 
presidential campaign. The Federalists were 



80 Hoiv the United States hecame a Nation 

too weak to nominate a candidate for the 
presidency, and Mr. Madison's only competitor 
was DeWitt Clinton of New York, who had 




Z^e^//z ^/^^.^z-^^iZ^ . 



been nominated by a section of the Repub- 
licans as likely to prove a more efficient 
war magistrate than Madison. Most of the 



Second War with Great Britain 81 

Federalists now supported Clinton in a coa- 
lition which, as usual in such cases, proved 
disastrous to both sides. Of two hundred and 
eighteen electoral votes Madison received one 
hundred and twenty-eight, and was elected; 
the Federalists fell more than ever into dis- 
favor, and Clinton's career was henceforth 
restricted to his own state. 

The election showed that the war was 
popular. It had been made so by a series of 
naval victories which astonished everybody. 
On the 13th of August the frigate Essex, 
under command of Captain Porter, captured 
the sloop Alert, after a fight of eight minutes, 
without losing a man. On the 19th the frig- 
ate Constitution, under command of Captain 
Hull, after a half hour's fight in the Gulf of 
St. Lawrence, captured the frigate Giierriere. 
The American ship had fourteen men killed 
and wounded, and was ready for action again 
in a couple of hours ; the British sloop lost 
one hundred men, her three masts with all her 
rigging were shot away, and her hull was so 
badly damaged that she could not be carried 



82 Hoiv the United States became a Nation 

off as a prize. On the 13tli of October the 
sloop Wasp, Captain Jones, captured the sloop 
Frolic in a desperate fight off Cape Hatteras. 
On the 25th the frigate United States, Captain 
Decatur, captured the frigate Macedonian off 




Captain Isaac Hill 

the island of Madeira after a fight of an hour 
and a half. The British ship lost one hundred 
and six men, was totally dismasted, and had 
nearly a hundred shot holes in her hull, but 
was brought away to America ; Decatur's ship 
lost only twelve men, and was quite uninjured. 



Second War ivith Great Britain 



83 




Bainbridge Medal 

These remarkable victories continued. On 
the 29th of December the Constitution, Cap- 
tain Bainbridge, in a two hours' fight off the 
coast of Brazil, knocked to pieces the frigate 
Java, which lost two hundred and thirty men 
and had to be destroyed. On the 24th of 
February, 1813, off the coast of Guiana, the 
sloop Hornet, Captain Lawrence, destroyed 
the brig Peacock, which sank before her crew 
could be removed. The Hornet's rigging was 
much injured, but she lost only four men. 

To appreciate the force of these facts, we 
need to remember that during the preceding 
twenty years of almost continuous warfare 
with France and her allies, in hundreds of 



84 IIuw the United States heccmie a Natioti 




The "Chesapeake" and "Shannon" 

From a print published in 18I.i 

such single combats, the British navy had 
lost but five ships. Now in six fights against 
American vessels within a single year the 
British had been shockingly defeated every 
time. The explanation was to be found 
partly in the superiority of our shipbuilding, 
partly in the superiority of our gun prac- 
tice and the better discipline of our crews. 
One of the British captains won success by 
training his men after the American method. 
On the 1st of June, 1813, the British frigate 
Shannon, Captain Broke, captured the Amer- 
ican frigate ChesajKaJ^e in a severe battle 
near Boston harbor. The Americans lost 



Second War with Great Britain 



85 




The ''Enterprise" and ''Boxer" 

From a print publisht-d in lsl.> 

one hundred and forty-eight men. and the 
British eighty-three ; the Chesapeake suffered 
more damage than her antagonist, though 
the disparity was less than in the case of the 
American victories above mentioned. The 
extreme jubilation in England served as an 
index to the chagrin which had been caused 
by the six successive defeats. On the 14th 
of August the American brig Argus was cap- 
tured in the British Channel by the brig Pel- 
ican, and for a moment it might have seemed 
as if the spell of American success was broken. 
But a few weeks later Lieutenant Burrows in 
the brig Enterjjrise captured the brig Boxer 



86 How the United States hecame a Nation 

off Portland, Maine. In the spring Captain 
Porter in the frigate Essex had sailed around 
Cape Horn into the Pacific ocean, where he 
made a famous cruise and did immense dam- 
age to British commerce. In March, 1814, he 
was attacked in the harbor of Valparaiso by 
two British frigates, the Phmhe and the Cherub, 
and after the bloodiest fight of the war the 
Essex surrendered. In April, 1814, the Amer- 
ican sloop Peacock captured the brig Ejjervier 
off the coast of Florida ; in May the Wasp 
captured the sloop Peindeer, and in Septem- 
ber the sloop Avon, both actions taking place 
in the British channel. In both there was 
the same prodigious disparity of loss as in 
earlier fights. The Reindeer and the Avon 
were completely destroyed, one losing sixty- 
five men, the other one hundred ; while in the 
former action the Wasjis loss was twenty- 
six, in the latter only three. On the 20th 
of February, 1815, the Constitution, now 
commanded by Captain Stewart, capped the 
climax by capturing the frigate Cyane and 
the sloop Levant in an action of forty 



Second War^ with Great Britain 87 




The " Constitution " 

From a print published about 181.5 



minutes near the island of Madeira. The 
two British ships together were barely a 
match in strength for the Constitution, but 
were very skillfully handled ; and the victory 
of " Old Ironsides " was as brilliant as any 
recorded in naval annals. A few weeks later 
the Hornet captured the brig Penguin off the 
Cape of Good Hope, and in the Indian ocean 
the Peacock closed the long tale of victory 
by overcoming the weaker Nautilus. These 



88 Hoio the United States hecayne a Nation 

last three victories occurred after peace had 
been declared. 

Thus out of sixteen sea combats with 
approximately equal forces the Americans 
had been victorious in thirteen. The record 
of our privateers was not less remarkable. 
During the war we took about seventeen 
hundred British vessels, while the British 
took about an equal number from us. Con- 
sidering that the American navy in 1812 
consisted of about a dozen ships, while the 
British navy numbered more than a thousand, 
and that the Americans had not a single line- 
of-battle ship afloat, these results might well 
be called marvelous. No other nation has 
ever won such laurels in contending against 
the "mistress of the seas." The moral effect 
upon Europe was prodigious. Henceforth the 
United States ceased to be regarded as a 
nation that could be insulted with impunity. 

Except for the moral effect of these splendid 
sea fights, the United States gained compara- 
tively little by the war. On land the offen- 
sive operations of the army were feeble and 




Engraved Title-Page for the " Naval Monument 

(a book published in 1815 celebrating the victories of the American navy) 



89 



Second War ivith Great Bi'itain 



91 



ineffectual. The army was small and poorly 
trained, and too much under the control of 
politicians. Hence we began with defeats. 
The military object of the Americans was to 




^^- }^c.a^ 



invade Canada and conquer it if possible. 
The military object of the British was to 
invade the United States and either detach 
a portion of our northwestern territory or 
secure positions which might prove valuable 
in bargaining for terms of peace. The most 



92 Hoiv the United States became a Nation 

important frontier town, Detroit, was held by 
William Hull, governor of the Michigan ter- 
ritory, a gallant veteran of the Revolutionary 
War. When war was declared he marched 
into Canada, but was driven back to Detroit 
by a superior force under General Brock. 
After a short siege Hull was obliged to sur- 
render the town, thus throwing open to the 
enemy the whole region northwest of Ohio. 
In the fit of unreasoning rage and disappoint- 
ment caused by this grave disaster, Hull was 
tried by a court-martial and sentenced to 
death, but was pardoned by Mr. Madison on 
account of past services. Subsequent research 
has shown that the verdict was grossly un- 
just; and the reputation of this brave but 
unfortunate man is now redeemed. In Octo- 
ber a small force crossed Niagara river and 
foolishly attacked the British in their strong 
position on Queenstown Heights; it was de- 
feated with heavy loss. Harrison, who had 
succeeded to the command in the Northwest, 
now attempted to recover Detroit; but his 
advanced guard under General Winchester 



Second War tvith Great Britain 93 

was defeated at the river Raisin on the 22d 
of January, 1813, by the British and Indians 
under General Proctor, and all the prison- 
ers were cruelly massacred by the Indians. 




6^9^f. 



Harrison was then driven back to Fort Meigs 
by Proctor, who besieged him there, but un- 
successfully. 

During the summer of 1813 both British 
and Americans were busily engaged in build- 
ing fleets with which to control Lake Erie. 
On the 10th of September the two fleets met 



94 How the United States became a Nation 

in battle, the British commanded by Com- 
modore Barclay, the Americans by Commo- 
dore Perry. The forces were nearly equal. 
The battle, won by magnificent skill and dar- 
ing on the part of the American commander, 
ended in the surrender of the whole British 
fleet and turned the scale of war in the North- 
west. Ferried across the lake by Perry's fleet, 
Harrison's army now entered Canada and in- 
flicted a crushing defeat upon Proctor at the 
river Thames (October 5). This was a severe 
blow to the Indians also, for their famous 
leader, Tecumseh, was killed. As a conse- 
quence of the victories of Perry and Harri- 
son, the Americans recovered Detroit and the 
British were driven from our northwestern 
territory. 

Next summer the Americans again invaded 
Canada under command of an excellent gen- 
eral, Jacob Brown, with whom served an 
officer presently to become famous, — Winfield 
Scott. They crossed the Niagara river and de- 
feated the British in four well-fought battles, 
at Chippewa (July 5), Lundy's Lane (July 25), 



Second War with Great Britain 95 




■'j'fi^^ '*^ 



.SKCO.M) viKW OK Com; i'i;kky's ^■l(•TOln'. 



Two Views of Perky's Victory 

From prints published in 1815 

and Fort Erie (August 15 and September 17) ; 
but in spite of these successes they obtained 
no secure foothold in Canada and retreated 
across the river before cold weather. While 
these things were going on the British were 



96 How the United States became a Nation 

planning an invasion of northeastern New 
York by the route which Carleton and 
Burgoyne had followed. To this end it was 
necessary to gain control of Lake Champlain, 
as Carleton had done in 1776. Fleets were 
built, as on Lake Erie the year before, and on 
the 11th of September a decisive battle was 
fought not far from Valcour Island where 
Arnold had maintained such a heroic struggle. 
The British fleet was annihilated by Commo- 
dore Macdonough, and the British enterprise 
was abandoned. But while this attempt upon 
New York was a failure, the British succeeded 
in seizing the unoccupied wilds of Maine east 
of the Penobscot river, and thus creatino; a 
panic in New England. 

The repjion west of Geors^ia and south of 
the Tennessee river was then a wilderness 
with no important towns except Natchez and 
Mobile. The principal military power in it 
was that of the Creek Indians, who took the 
occasion to attack the frontier settlements, 
and in August, 1813, began with a terrible 
massacre at Fort Mimms near Mobile. This 




97 



Second War ivith Great Britain 99 

brought upon the scene the formidable Ten- 
nessee militia commanded by Andrew Jack- 
son, who as a youth had served under Thomas 
Sumter in the Revolutionary War. After a 




Andrew Jackson 

After the portrait by Jarvis made in 1815 



bloody campaign of seven months Jackson had 
completely subdued the Creeks and was ready 
to cope with a very different sort of enemy. 

In March, 1814, Napoleon was dethroned and 
sent to Elba, and thus some of Wellington's 



100 Hoiv the United States became a Nation 

finest troops were detached for service in 
America. In August some five thousand 
of these veterans landed in Chesapeake Bay, 
took the defenseless city of Washington, and 
burned the public buildings there, which was 
not much to their credit. They then attempted 




The Capitol at Washington after being burned 
BY THE British 

From an old print 

Baltimore, but were defeated, and retired 
from the scene to take part in a more serious 
enterjDrise. This expedition against Washing- 
ton was designed chiefly for insult ; the expe- 
dition ao-ainst New Orleans was desis-ned to 
inflict deadly injury. It was intended to make 
a permanent conquest of the lower Mississippi, 



Second War ivith Great Britain 101 

and to secure for Great Britain the western 
bank of the river. In December the British 
army of twelve thousand men under Sir Ed- 
ward Pakenham landed below New Orleans. 
To oppose these veterans of the peninsula, 
Jackson had six thousand militia of that 
sturdy race whose fathers had vanquished 
Ferguson at Kings Mountain and whose chil- 
dren so nearly vanquished Grant at Shiloh. 
He awaited the enemy in an intrenched posi- 
tion, where, on the 8th of January, 1815, 
Pakenham was unwise enough to try to over- 
whelm him by a direct assault. In less than 
half an hour the British were in full retreat, 
leaving Pakenham and twenty-six hundred 
men behind them killed or wounded ; the 
American loss was eight killed and thirteen 
wounded. The disparity of loss is perhaps 
unparalleled in history. 

News traveled so slowly in those days that 
the victory of New Orleans, like the last three 
naval victories, occurred after peace had been 
made. From the first the war had been un- 
popular in New England. Our victories on 



102 How the United States became a Nation 

the sea made little difference in the vast 
naval force of Great Britain, which was able to 
blockade our whole Atlantic coast. Now that 
Napoleon was out of the way it would be 
necessary for the United States to fight single- 
handed with Great Britain. In view of these 
things, and provoked by the invasion of 
Maine, the Federalists of New England held 
a convention at Hartford in December, 1814, 
to discuss the situation of affairs and decide 
upon the proper course to be pursued. As 
there was much secrecy in the proceedings, a 
suspicion was aroused that the purpose of the 
convention was to break up the Union and 
form a separate New England confederacy. 
This suspicion completed the political ruin 
of the Federalist party. What might have 
come from the Hartford convention we do 
not know, for on the 24th of December the 
treaty of peace was signed at Ghent. The 
treaty left things apparently just as they had 
been before the war, for England did not 
explicitly renounce the right of search and 
impressment. But in spite of this it had 



Second War ivlth Great Britain 103 

been made evident that European nations 
could no longer regard the United States as a 
weak nation wliich might be insulted with 
impunity. Partly for this reason, and partly 
because of the long European peace which 
followed, the British claim to the right of 
search and impressment was no longer exer- 
cised, and at length in 1856 was expressly 
renounced. 



THE RISE OF THE DEMOCRACY 



105 



THE RISE OF THE DEMOCRACY 

The era of good feeling. Florida. Monroe doctrine. Growth 
of the nation. Growth of slavery. The Missouri Com- 
promise. The young West. Whigs and Democrats. 
Tariffs. Nullification. A new era. The spoils system. 
Whigs come into power. Oregon and Texas. 

Ill the presidential election of 1816 the 
Federalist candidate, Rufus King, received 
only thirty-four electoral votes, against one 
hundred and eighty-seven for the Republi- 
can candidate, James Monroe. In 1820, when 
Monroe was nominated for a second term, 
the Federalists put no candidate into the 
field, and Monroe's election was practically 
unanimous ; for form's sake one of the elec- 
tors voted for John Quincy Adams, so that 
no other President might share with Wash- 
ington the glory of an election absolutely 
unanimous. The two parties had now acqui- 
esced in each other's measures, and all, save 
a few malcontents, called themselves Repub- 
licans. The end of the war was the end of 

107 



108 How the Umted States became a Nation 

the political issues which had divided parties 
since 1789, and some little time was required 
for new issues to define themselves ; so that 
the period of Monroe's administrations has 
been called "the era of good feeling." In 
point of fact, however, it was by no means 
a time of millennial happiness. 

The changed attitude of the United States 
toward European powers was illustrated in 
two events of this period. The Seminole 
Indians, aided by the Spanish authorities in 
Florida, molested our southern frontier until 
General Jackson invaded that territory' in 
order to put an end to the nuisance. Though 
Jackson's rough measures were not fully sus- 
tained by the United States, yet resistance on 
the part of Spain was so hopeless that she 
consented to sell Florida to the United States 
for five million dollars ; and a treaty to this 
effect was made in 1819. 

About this time the revolt of Mexico and 
the Spanish colonies in South America had 
made consideraljlo progress, and it seemed 
likely that the ''Holy Alliance" of Austria, 



The Rise of the Democracy 



109 



Prussia, and Russia would interfere to assist 
Spain in subduing her colonies. To check 
such a movement, Mr. Monroe declared, in a 
message to Congress in 1823, that the United 





Z^^^^^^^iJ-'^-'^^ ^^5"^^ 



States regarded the continents of North and 
,South America as no longer open to coloniza- 
tion, and would resent an attempt on the 
part of any European nation to reduce any 



110 IIoiD the United States became a Nation 

independent American nation to the condition 
of a colony. In this bold declaration the 
United States had the full sympathy of Eng- 
land, and it proved effectual. The attitude 
of mind implied in such a declaration showed 
that our period of national weakness was felt 
to have come to an end. 

Since the time of Washington the growth 
of the United States had been remarkable 
indeed. The population now numbered nearly 
ten million; the public revenue had increased 
from five million dollars to twenty-five million 
dollars. New states Avere formed with sur- 
prising rapidity, as the obstacles to migration 
were removed. The chief obstacles had been 
the hostility of the Indians and the difficulty 
of getting from place to place. During the 
late war the Indian powder had been broken 
by Harrison in the north and by Jackson in 
the south. In 1807 Robert Fulton had in- 
vented the steamboat. In 1811 a steamboat 
was launched on the Ohio river at Pittsburg, 
and presently such nimble craft were plying 
on all the western rivers, carrying settlers 



The Rise of the Democracy 111 

and traders, farm produce and household 
utensils. This gave an immense impetus to 




the western migration. After Ohio had been 
admitted to the Union in 1802, ten years had 
elapsed before the next state, Louisiana, was 



112 Hoiv the United States became a Nation 

added. But in six years after the war a new 
state was added every year: Indiana in 181G, 
Mississippi in 1817, Illinois in 1818, Alabama 
in 1819, Maine in 1820, Missouri in 1821. 
The admission of the last-named state was a 
portentous event, for it suddenly brought the 
slavery question into the foreground. 

Before the Revolution all the colonies had 
negro slaves, but north of Maryland these 
slaves were few in number and of no very 
great value as property. Hence they were 
soon emancipated in all the northern states 
except Delaware. At the close of the eight- 
eenth century there was a strong antislavery 
feeling even in Virginia and North Carolina, 
and it was generally supposed that slavery 
would gradually become extinct without mak- 
ing serious political trouble. The only states 
strongly in favor of slavery were South Caro- 
lina and Georgia, where the cultivation of rice 
and indigo seemed to make negro labor indis- 
pensable. But at about that time the in- 
ventions of the steam engine, the spinning 
machine, and the power loom had combined 



The Rise of the Democracy 113 





to set up the giant manufactories of England, 
and there was thus suddenly created a great 
demand for cotton. In 1793 Eli Whitney, a 



114 How the Umted States became a Nation 

Connecticut schoolmaster living in Georgia, 
invented the famous cotton gin, an instrument 
so simple that slaves could use it, and which 
enabled cotton to be cleaned and got ready 
for market with astonishing speed. Hitherto 
very little cotton had been grown in South 
Carolina and Georgia, but now cotton growing 
became very profitable, and there was a great 
demand for negro slaves. In 1808, according 
to a provision of the Federal Constitution, the 
importation of slaves from Africa was pro- 
hibited by law, so that henceforth cotton 
planters could only obtain slaves by buying 
them in such border states as Virginia and 
Kentucky. This made the raising of negroes 
so profitable to the tobacco planters of the 
border states that antislavery sentiments soon 
died out among them, and the way was pre- 
pared for uniting all the slave states into a 
solid South opposed to a solid North. Hence- 
forth there was no likelihood that slavery 
would die a natural death. On the contrary, 
the policy of the slaveholders became ex- 
tremely aggressive and sought new territory 



The Rise of the Democracy \\b 

in which to introduce this barbcirous system of 
labor and Ijiiild up new states to maintain and 
extend their authority in the Federal Union. 

It was not until the westward migration 
had crossed the Mississippi river and entered 
upon the vast Louisiana territory which Jef- 
ferson had added to the national domain that 
the conflict began. A kind of compromise 
had been kept up from the beginning by ad- 
mitting a free state and a slave state by turns, 
so as to balance each other in Congress. 
Thus Vermont had been counterbalanced by 
Kentucky, Tennessee by Ohio, Louisiana by 
Indiana, Mississippi by Illinois. In like man- 
ner Alabama, in 1819, was naturally counter- 
balanced in the following year by Maine ; but 
as Missouri was also knocking at the door of 
Congress, the southern members now refused 
to admit Maine until the northern members 
should consent to admit Missouri as a slave 
state. The discussion was the most important 
that had come up since the adoption of the 
Constitution; for it involved the whole ques- 
tion of the power of the government to allow 



116 How the United States became a Nation 

or prohibit slavery in the national domain. 
It was settled in 1820 by the famous Missouri 
Compromise, effected chiefly by the efforts of 
Henry Clay. Missouri was admitted as a 
slave state, but it was agreed that slavery 
should be prohibited in the remainder of the 
Louisiana Purchase north of the parallel of 
36° 30'. In other words, the slaveholders 
gained their point by promising "not to do 
so any more"; and, like most such promises, 
it was kept till an occasion arose for break- 
ing it. That occasion did not arise for more 
than thirty years, and it was not until the 
latter part of this interval that the question 
of slavery again became uppermost in national 
politics. 

It was the extension of national territory 
or the admission of new states that brousrht 
up the slavery question. Several years now 
elapsed before the national area or the num- 
ber of states was increased. Enough country 
was already covered to answer the needs of 
the people until better means of communi- 
cation were devised. The most important 




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The Locks at Lockport on the Erie Canal 

From prints published in 1838 



117 



The Rim of the Democracy 119 

avenue of trade opened in this period was 
the Erie canal, which brought the Hudson 
river directly into connection with the Great 
Lakes. This insured the commercial suprem- 
acy of the city of New York as the chief out- 
let for western traffic. At the time of the 
Declaration of Independence the state of New 
York ranked seventh among the thirteen in 
population, and the Indian frontier was be- 
tween Albany and Utica. In the census of 
1820 the city of New York for the first time 
showed a larger population than Philadelphia, 
and the state came to the head of the list, 
instead of Virginia, which had hitherto been 
the foremost state. It was the westward 
migration from New England that first filled 
up central New York and carried the state 
to the head of the list. The Erie canal and 
steam navigation on the lakes presently car- 
ried this migration into Michigan ; but it 
was not till 1837 that that state was admitted 
into the Union as a balance for Arkansas, 
admitted in 1836. New England people had 
meanwhile occupied the northern parts of 



120 Hoio the United States became a Nation 

Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois ; but it was not 
New England that first determined the char- 
acter of the young West. Long before the 
overflow of New England had filled rural New 
York, the overflow of Virginia and North 
Carolina had made the states of Kentucky 
and Tennessee, and a hardy population from 
all parts of the Alleghenies had thrust itself 
into all parts of the West, from the prairies of 
Illinois to the highlands of Alabama. These 
people were as different from the slavehold- 
ing planters of South Carolina or Louisiana 
as from the merchants and yeomanry of New 
England; and when by and by the stress of 
civil war came, they were the stout ligament 
which held the Union together. They were 
rough and ready, inclined to despise the refine- 
ments of civilized life, very loose in their ideas 
of finance, and somewhat too careless in their 
use of pistols. They were intensely Ameri- 
can withal, cared nothing for a European 
civilization of which they knew nothing, 
and were sufficient unto themselves. These 
men had their representative statesman in 



The Rise of the Democracy 121 





^y 



Thomas Benton ^ and their popular hero in 
Andrew Jackson. 

In the presidential election of 1824 all parties 
called themselves Republicans, and political 

^ He did not represent their shaky financial notions, 
however ; on this point his views were so sound that he 
was nicknamed " Old Bullion." 



122 HoiD the United States became a Nation 

issues were so ill-defined that the contest 
seemed to concern itself only with the per- 
sonal merits of the candidates. The real but 
unrecognized issue was between the notions 
of the young democratic West and the polite, 
half-aristocratic notions of the old Atlantic 
states. The four candidates were John Quincy 
Adams, one of the grandest figures in Ameri- 
can history ; Henry Clay, the genial author 
of the Missouri Compromise ; William Craw- 
ford, earliest representative alike of the wire- 
pullers and of the secessionists; and the in- 
vincible soldier, Andrew Jackson. The latter 
had the greatest number of electoral votes, 
but no one had a majority; and so the elec- 
tion was thrown into the House of Represent- 
atives, where the friends of Clay, uniting with 
the friends of Adams, secured the election of 
the latter. Jackson's friends thought that 
their hero had Ijeen ill-used ; but they were 
made happy by the next election, in 1828, 
where Adams and Jackson were the only 
opposing candidates, and the former obtained 
only eighty-three out of two hundred and 



The Rise of the Deinocracy 123 

sixty-one electoral votes. Jackson's victory 
in 1828 was the victory of the West over tlie 
East, and marked the rise of the new democ- 
racy. It was in the canvass preceding this 
election that Jackson's supporters assumed 




the name of Democrats. Their opponents 
were known at first as '' National Republi- 
cans," but in the course of his administra- 
tion, as they saw fit to represent Jackson 
as a kind of tyrant, like George III, they 



124 How the United States hecame a Nation 

took the name of "Whigs"; and hence- 
forth, until 1854, Whig and Democrat were 
the names of the two political parties in the 
United States. 

The Whigs approved of allowing the Fed- 
eral government to use the public money in 
building roads, dredging rivers, and making 
other internal improvements ; the Democrats 
thought that such things ought to be done 
by the local governments or by private en- 
terprise. The Whigs espoused the policy of 
taxing the whole community in order to sup- 
port a few manufacturers in carrying on a 
business which, without such aid, it was 
presumed would be a losing one. This was 
done by means of a high tariff upon imported 
goods. It was ingeniously called " protecting 
American labor," and was glorified by Clay 
as " the American system," though in reality 
the custom is as old as human greed, and 
might as well be called Asiatic as Ameri- 
can. The Democrats opposed this policy, but 
not always intelligently. Again, the Whigs 
were in favor of continuing the National Bank 





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1 


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L ,^^ 


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125 



The liise of the Democracy 127 

which had been chartered by Congress in 1816 ; 
the Democrats were bitterly opposed to it ; 
and, with regard to all these points — internal 
improvements, tariff, and bank — the Whigs 
favored a loose, and the Democrats a strict, 
interpretation of the Federal Constitntion. 

The War of 1812 had made it difficult to 
obtain manufactured goods from abroad, and 
articles of an inferior quality had in many in- 
stances begun to be made in the United States. 
Our manufacturers thought this scarcity a 
desirable thing, and tried to prolong it after 
the end of the war by taxing imported goods 
so heavily as to make people buy their infe- 
rior articles instead. One effect of the tariff 
has been to prevent American goods from at- 
taining the high standard of excellence which 
they would have reached under a system of free 
competition. For example, if Scotch woolens 
were to be admitted free of duty, American 
woolens would either have to be made as 
excellent as the Scotch, or people would stop 
buying them ; and accordingly they would soon 
come to be as fine as the Scotch goods. But 



128 Hoiv the United States became a Nation 

people were afraid that unless foreign compe- 
tition were ruled out, it would be impossible 
to get American manufactories well started. 
High tariffs were accordingly adopted in 1828 
and 1832. 

These tariffs were bitterly opposed by the 
southern states, except Louisiana, where the 
sugar planters were ready to admit the high- 
tariff principle in order to apply it to foreign 
sugars. The southerners had no manufactures 
of their own, and naturally preferred to buy 
good clothes and good tools at a low price, 
rather than poor clothes and poor tools at 
a high price. The doctrine of the Kentucky 
resolutions of 1799 made great progress in 
the South; and in 1832 a state convention in 
South Carolina declared the tariff law null 
and void, forbade the. collection of duties at 
any port in the state, and called for troops to 
resist the Federal government if necessary. 
This was "nullification." It found no favor 
in the eyes of Jackson, though he disliked the 
tariff law as much as the South Carolinians. 
He declared that " the Federal Union must 



The Rise of the Democracy 129 

and shall be preserved," sent an armed fleet 
to Charleston harbor, and warned the people 
of South Carolina that any attempt at resist- 
ing the law would be put down with a high 
hand. Presently, in 1833, a new tariff law, 
known as the "Compromise Tariff," was passed, 
and some concessions were made which afforded 




The Mohawk and Hidson Kaili:oai>, 1831 

Rt'diawn from an old sketch 

South Carolina an opportunity to repeal her 
ordinance of nullification. 

About 1830 the United States was enter- 
ing upon an era of more rapid progress than 
had ever been witnessed before. The era was 
quite as remarkable for the civilized world as 
a whole. In 1830 the first American railroad 
was put in operation, and by 1840 nearly all 
the chief cities east of the Alleghenies were 
connected by rail, and the system was rapidly 



130 How the United States became a Nation 

extending itself in the West. The effect of rail- 
roads was especially great in America, where 
the ordinary roads have always been very 
bad as compared with those of Europe. Their 
effect in hastening the growth of our western 
country by and by surpassed that which had 
been wrought by steamboats. In 1836 John 
Ericsson invented the screw propeller, which 
required much less fuel than the paddle wheel ; 
and two years afterward steamships began to 
make regular trips across the Atlantic. Pres- 
ently this set up the vast emigration of labor- 
ers from Europe, which has been going on 
ever since. Our cities began to lose their vil- 
lage-like appearance; in 1830 New York had 
a population of rather more than two hundred 
thousand. Agricultural machines began to be 
invented ; friction matches came into use ; an- 
thracite coal came in to aid both manufactures 
and locomotion ; and in 1836 the Patent Ofhce 
had so much to do that it was made a distinct 
bureau. At the same time our methods of 
education and our newspapers were improved, 
and American literature began to attract the 



llie Rise of the Democracy 131 




world's attention. Before 1830, Bryant, Irv- 
ing, and Cooper had become distinguished ; in 
the decade after 1830, Longfellow, Whittier, 
Hawthorne, Holmes, Bancroft, and Prescott 
appeared on the scene, soon to be followed 
by Emerson. In this period Daniel Webster, 
already famous for many years, was at the 
height of his wonderful power. He was prob- 
ably the greatest orator that ever lived, after 
Demosthenes and Chatham, and as a master 
of the English language he was superior to 
Chatham. His magnificent speeches, the most 



132 HoiD the United States became a Nation 

impressive passages from which were made fa- 
miliar to every sclioolboy, contributed greatly 
to raise the love of the Union into a roman- 
tic sentiment for which people would fight as 
desperately as ever cavalier fought in defense 
of his king. In this way Webster rendered 
incalculable service, and not a bit too soon. 
For humanitarian movements were beginning 
to mark this new era ; and along with prison 
reform and temperance societies came the abo- 
litionists, with their assaults upon negro slav- 
ery, bravely led in the press by William Lloyd 
Garrison, in Congress by John Quincy Adams, 
who in 1831 was elected to the House of 
Representatives, where he stayed till his death 
in 1848. The southern members tried to 
smother the discussion of the subject of slav- 
ery, but Adams could not be silenced, and in 
1836 he w^ent so far as to enunciate the doc- 
trine upon which Mr. Lincoln afterward rested 
his proclamation of emancipation. 

Some of the changes which marked this 
new era were by no means changes for the 
better. Hitherto all our presidents, taken 






cy/l &M.o-nM^^(r7\y' 



133 



I'he Rise of the Democracy 135 

from the two oldest states, Massachusetts and 
Virginia, had been men of aristocratic type, 
with well-trained minds and polished man- 
ners, like European statesmen ; and all ex- 
cept Monroe had been men of extraordinary 
ability. In Jackson, the first President from 
beyond the Alleghenies, the idol of the rough 
pioneer West, we had a very different type 
of man. There was immense native energy, 
with little training ; downright honesty of pur- 
pose, with a very feeble grasp of the higher 
problems of statecraft. Jackson was a man 
of violent measures and made many mistakes. 
His greatest mistake was the use of govern- 
ment offices as rewards for his friends and 
adherents. Heretofore the civil service had 
been practically independent of politics, as it 
is to-day in England. There had been but 
one instance of a great party overthrow ; that 
was in the election of 1800. Jefferson's fol- 
lowers then wished him to turn Federalist 
postmasters and collectors out of office, and 
put Republicans in their places ; but he had 
been too wise to do so. In 1829 Jackson 



136 HoiD the United States became a Nation 

introduced into national politics the principle 
of " rotation in office," by which government 
officials were liable to be turned out every 
fourth year, not for any misconduct, but 
simply to make room for Ijungry applicants 
belonging to the opposite party. Jackson 
was not the inventor of this system. It had 
already been tried in state politics, and brought 
to something like perfection in New York. It 
was a New York politician, William Marcy, 
who first used the phrase, " To the victors 
belong the spoils," thereby implying that a 
public office is not a public trust but a bit of 
plunder, and that the services of an officer 
paid by the people are due, not to the people, 
but to a party or a party chief. The author 
of the phrase doubtless never supposed that 
he was making one of the most infamous 
remarks recorded in history ; and the honest 
Jackson would probably have been greatly 
surprised if he had been allowed a glimpse 
of the future, and seen that he was intro- 
ducing a gigantic system of knavery and cor- 
ruption which within forty years would grow 



The Rise of the Democracy 137 

into the most serious of tlie evils threatening 
the continuance of our free government. 

Jackson made another mistake, which was 
trivial compared with the adoption of the 




spoils system, but which created much more 
disturbance at the time. His antipathy to 
the National Bank led him not only, in 1832, 



138 HoiD the United States hecame a Nation 

to veto the bill for the renewal of its charter, 
but in the following year to withdraw the 
public money deposited in the bank, and dis- 
tribute it among various state banks. This 
violent measure led to a series of events 
which in 1837 culminated in the most dis- 
tressing commercial panic that had ever been 
known in America. Martin Van Buren, of 
New York, was then President, having been 
elected in 1836 over the western soldier, 
Harrison. Van Buren belonged to Jackson's 
wing of the Democratic party, in tlie ranks 
of which a schism was appearing between 
the nullifiers and the men who were devoted 
to the Union. He was what would now be 
known as a " machine politician," but of the 
more honorable sort.. His administration was 
a fairly able one. In the course of it one 
phase of the National Bank question reached 
a satisfactory solution in the so-called sub- 
treasury system, which, after some vicissi- 
tudes, was finally established in 1846, and is 
still in force. By this system the public rev- 
enues are not deposited in any bank, but are 



The Rise of the Democracy 139 

paid over on demand to the treasury depart- 
ment by the collectors, who are required to 
give bonds for the proper discharge of their 
duty. The establishment of this system was 





^^^^^^^^V?^ 



creditable to Van Buren's administration, but 
the panic of 1837 caused so much distress as 
to make many people wish for a change in 
the government. Turning to their own uses 
the same kind of popular sentiment which 



140 How the United States hecame a Nation 

had elected Jackson, the Whigs nominated 
again the plain soldier, Harrison, who had 
lived in a log cabin and had hard cider on 
his table. In the famous " hard-cider cam- 
paign" of 1840 Harrison won a sweeping 




victory, getting two hundred and thirty-four 
electoral votes to Van Buren's sixty. The 
Whigs had a majority in both houses of Con- 
gress. But the managers of the party had 
made a mistake such as has since recurred 
in American politics. For Vice President 



The Rise of the Democracy 141 

they had nominated a Democrat, John Tyler, 
of Virginia, in the hope of getting votes from 
those Democrats who were dissatisfied with 
Jackson and Van Buren. Just one month 
after Harrison's inauguration he died, and 
Tyler became President. By this unexpected 
event the Whigs lost the fruits of their vic- 
tory. The President was able, by his vetoes, 
to defeat their measures, and thus their at- 
tempts to undo the work of Jackson and Van 
Buren, as regards the National Bank, ended 
in failure. 

Under Tyler's administration, questions of 
foreign policy, involving chances of war, 
again came into the foreground ; but they 
were very different questions from those which 
had occupied our attention in the begin- 
ning of the century, and the mere statement 
of them gives a vivid impression of the enor- 
mous growth of the United States since the 
War of 1812. The northwestern corner of 
North America, down to the parallel of 54° 
40', now known as the territory of Alaska, 
was then a kind of appendage to Siberia, 



142 How the United States became a Nation 



and belonged to Russia. The region between 
Russian America and California, known as 
Oregon, was claimed by the United States, 
on the ground of the discoveries of Lewis 
and Clark. But Great Britain also had claims 




cJ^y^i^ 



upon this region, and since 1818 it had been 
subject to the joint occupation of Great Brit- 
ain and the United States. But by 1842 the 
American stream of westward migration, 
crossing the Rocky mountains, had poured 



The Rise of the Democracy 143 

into Oregon, and it began to be a question 
how this vast territory should be divided. 
The Americans claimed everything, and the 
Democrats went into the next presidential 
campaign with the alliterative war cry, " Fifty- 
four forty or fight " ; but popular interest in 
the question was not strong enough to sustain 
this bold policy. Great western statesmen 
like Benton appreciated the importance of 
Oregon much better than great eastern states- 
men like Webster ; but none were fully alive 
to its importance, and the southerners, rep- 
resented by Calhoun, felt little interest in a 
territory which seemed quite unavailable for 
the making of slave states. Accordingly, in 
1846 the matter was compromised with Great 
Britain, and the territory was divided at the 
forty-ninth parallel, all above that line being 
British, all below American. If the feeling 
of national solidarity in the United States 
had been nearly as strong as it is to-day, we 
should probably have insisted upon our claim 
to the whole; in which case we should now, 
since our purchase of Alaska from Russia, 



144 IIoiD the United States hecmne a Nation 

possess the whole Pacific coast north of Mex- 
ico to Bering strait. It is perhaps to be 
regretted that such a bold policy was not 
pursued in 1846. It had many chances of 
success, for our available military strength, 
all things considered, was then probably not 
inferior to that of Great Britain. 

Very different was the popular feeling Avith 
regard to Texas. That magnificent country, 
greater in extent than any country of Europe 
except Russia, had been settled by emigrants 
from the United States, and in 1835 had 
rebelled against Mexican rule. In 1836 the 
American General Houston had defeated the 
Mexican General Santa Anna in the decisive 
battle of San Jacinto and won the independ- 
ence of Texas. After this the slaveholders 
of the southern states wished to annex Texas 
to the Union. Lying south of the parallel of 
63° 30', it might become a slave state, and it 
was hoped that it might hereafter be divided 
into several states, so as to maintain the weight 
of the southerners in the United States Senate. 
After the admission of Arkansas in 1836, and 



The Rise of the Democracy 145 

Michigan to balance it in 1837, the South had 
no more room for expansion unless it should 




acquire new territory; whereas the North had 
still a vast space westward at its command. 



146 IIoiD the United States hecame a Nation 

It seemed likely that the North would pres- 
ently gain a steady majority in the Senate; 
and in the House of Representatives, where 
strength depended on population, the North 
was constantly gaining, partly because the 
institution of slavery prevented the South 
from sharing in the advantages of the emi- 
gration from Europe, and partly for other 
reasons connected with the inferiority of 
slave labor to free labor. It was therefore 
probable that before long the North would 
come to control the action of Congress, and 
might then try to abolish slavery. This was 
a natural dread on the part of the South, and 
the abolitionist agitation tended to strengthen 
and exasperate it. The only safeguard for 
the South seemed to be the acquisition of 
fresh territory, and thus the annexation of 
Texas came now to furnish the burning ques- 
tion in politics and to array the northern and 
southern states against each other in a con- 
test for supremacy which could only be settled 
by an appeal to arms. In the presidential 
election of 1844 the Democratic candidate 



The Rise of the Deynocracy 



147 




was James K. Polk of Tennessee and the 
Whig candidate was Henry Clay; and there 
was a third nomination which determined the 
result of the election. The abolitionists had 
put forward James Birney as a presidential 
candidate in 1840, but had got very few 
votes ; they now put him forward again. 
The contest was close. The success of the 
Whigs seemed probable until the weakness of 
Clay's moral fiber ruined it, — a lesson for 
American politicians, by which too few have 



148 How the United States hecanie a Nation 

had the good sense to profit. In the idle hope 
of catching Democratic votes, he published a 
letter favoring the annexation of Texas at 
some future time. This device met the fail- 
ure which ought to follow all such flimsy 
maneuvers. It won no Democratic votes for 
Clay, but angered a great many antislaver}- 
Whigs, who threw away their votes upon 
Birney and thus carried the state of New 
York over to Polk and elected him President. 
It was the most closely contested election in 
our history except those of 1800, 1876, and 
1884. 



THE SLAVE POWER 



149 



THE SLAVE POWER 

War with Mexico. Wilniot Proviso. California. Effects of 
the Compromise. Kansas -Nebraska bill. The struggle for 
Kansas. Dred Scott. The crisis. 

The Democratic party thus remstated was 
quite different from the Democratic party 
which had elected Jackson and Van Buren. 
Its policy was now shaped mainly by the 
followers of Calhoun, the representatives of 
slavery and nullification, though the latter 
political heresy was not likely to assert itself 
so long as they could control the Federal 
government. With the election of Polk the 
North and South are finally arrayed in oppo- 
sition to each other ; the question as to slav- 
ery comes to the front, and stays there until 
the Civil War. 

In 1845 Texas was admitted to the Union, 
with the understanding that it might here- 
after be divided so as to make several slave 
states. Mexico was offended, but no occasion 

151 



152 How the United States heccmie a Nation 

for war arose until it was furnished Ijy Ijound- 
ary troubles due to that peculiar craving for 
territory which at this moment possessed the 
minds of the slaveholders. The boundary be- 
tween Texas and Mexico was a matter of 
dispute, and early in 1846 Mr. Polk ordered 
General Taylor to march in and take posses- 
sion of the disputed territory. This action 
was resented by Mexico and led to a war, 
which lasted nearly eighteen months. In the 
course of it California was conquered by Fre- 
mont, New Mexico by Kearney, and the north- 
ern portion of Mexico by Taylor; while Scott, 
landing at Vera Cruz, advanced and captured 
the city of Mexico. The United States sol- 
diers vanquished the Mexicans wherever they 
found them and wliatsoever the disparity of 
numbers. Thus at Buena Vista, February 22, 
1847, Taylor routed a Mexican army outnum- 
bering him more than four to one ; and some 
of the exploits of Doniphan in his march to 
Chihuahua remind us of the Greeks at Cimaxa 
or Arbela. Many incidents of the war were 
quite romantic, and it is interesting to the 



The Slave Power 153 

student of history as having been the school 
in which most of the great generals of our 




Civil War were trained to their work. In 
February, 1848, a treaty was made in which 



154 How the United States became a Nation 

Mexico gave up to the United States a territory 
almost as extensive as that which Jefferson had 
obtained from Napoleon. It brought the map 
of the United States very nearly to what it is 
to-day, except for the acquisition of Alaska. 

This immense acquisition of territory was a 
most fortunate event for everybody concerned 
in it ; but its immediate effect upon our poli- 
tics was far more disturbing than anything 
which had occurred since 1820. The antislav- 
ery party looked upon the war with strong 
disfavor, and their sentiments found expres- 
sion in the most remarkable political poems 
of modern times, the first series of Bigloiv 
Pa2)ers by James Russell Lowell. There was 
a renewal of the sectional strife which had 
been quieted for a time by the Missouri Com- 
promise. Slavery had been prohibited in the 
new territory by Mexican law, and the North 
wished to have this prohibition kept in force, 
but the South would not consent. To some 
the simplest solution seemed to be to prolong 
the Missouri Compromise line from the Rocky 
mountains to the Pacific, but neither party 



The Slave Power 



155 



was willing to give up so much to the other. 
Opposition to slavery had greatly increased at 




the North since 1820, and this had naturally 
increased the obstinacy of the South, so that it 
was becoming difficult to make compromises. 



156 How the United States hecmne a Nation 

In 1846 David Wilmot, a Democratic member 
of Congress from Pennsylvania, laid down the 
principle npon which, though not adopted at 
the time, the North was destined finally to 
take its stand and march to victory. By the 
famous Wilmot Proviso slavery was to be for- 
ever prohibited in the whole of the territory 
acquired from Mexico. The proviso was not 
adopted in Congress, but in 1848 it called 
into existence the Free-soil party, formed by 
the union of antislavery Democrats and Whigs 
with the abolitionists. This party nominated 
Martin Van Buren for President and Charles 
Francis Adams for Vice President. The Dem- 
ocrats nominated Lewis Cass of Michigan, 
and the Whigs nominated the military hero, 
Taylor; and neither of these two parties dared 
in its platform to say a word about the one 
burning question of the day, — the question 
of slavery in the new territory. The Free- 
soilers decided the election by drawing from 
the Democratic vote in New York, and so 
Taylor became President. Taylor was by far 
the ablest of the Presidents between Jackson 



Tlie tSlave Poioer 



157 



and Lincoln. He was brave, honest, and 
shrewd ; and though a Louisiana slave owner, 
he was unflinching in his devotion to the 
Union. He received warm support from the 





^^-^- 



great Missouri senator, Thomas Benton, the 
most eminent in ability of the Jacksonian 
Democrats. The political struggle during 
Taylor's administration related chiefly to the 
admission of California as a state in the Union. 



158 How the United States hecame a Nation 

Hitherto the westward migration had gone 
on at a steady pace, filUng up one area after 
another as it went along. In 1846 Iowa was 
admitted to the Union, tlie first free state 
west of the Mississippi ; in 1848 the admis- 
sion of Wisconsin at last filled up the region 
east of that river ; and the two states served 
as a counterweight in the Senate to Florida 
and Texas. Now the immigration took a 
sudden leap to the Pacific coast. In 1848 
gold was discovered in California and people 
rushed thither from all points of the compass 
in quest of sudden riches. Within a year the 
population had become large enough to en- 
title it to admission to the Union, and there 
was need of a strong government to hold in 
check the numerous ruffians who had flocked 
in along with honest people. In 1849 the 
people of California agreed upon a state con- 
stitution forbidding slavery and applied for 
admission to the Union. The southern mem- 
bers of Congress hotly opposed this, and 
threats of secession began to be heard. The 
controversy went on for a year, until it was 



The Slave Power 159 

settled by a group of compromise measures 
devised by Clay, who thirty years before had 
succeeded so well with his Missouri Com- 
promise. It was now agreed that California 
should be admitted as a free state; and in 
return for this concession the northern mem- 
bers consented to a very stringent law for the 
arrest by United States officers of fugitive 
slaves in the northern states. The region be- 
tween California and Texas was to be organ- 
ized into two territories, — Utah (including 
Nevada) and New Mexico (including Arizona); 
and the question whether slavery should be 
allowed in these territories was postponed. 
Before these measures had become law Mr. 
Taylor, who, supported by Benton, had taken 
strong ground against the threats of seces- 
sion, suddenly died, and the Vice President, 
Millard Fillmore, became President. Mr. Fill- 
more, like his two successors, belonged to 
the class of politicians whom the southerners 
called " doughfaces," — men who were ready 
to make almost any concessions to the slave 
power for the sake of avoiding strife. 



160 IIoio the United States became a Nation 




Instead of bringing quiet, as the Missouri 
Compromise had done, the Compromise of 
1850 was the prelude to more bitter and 
deadly strife. The cruelties attending the 
execution of the fugitive slave law aroused 
fierce indignation at the North, and presently 
produced a book which had an enormous sale, 
and was translated into almost all the literary 
languages of the world. Uncle Touts Cabin, 
by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, was a story 




y'^-r^.^i:^^^^ 



161 



The Slave roiver 163 

written to show what negro slavery really 
was. The book was written in a wonderful 
spirit of fairness, rather understating than 
exaggerating the evils of slavery, and it car- 
ried all the more conviction for that reason. 
Its influence in strengthening the antislavery 
feeling at the North must have been incalcu- 
lably great. Further service was done in the 
same direction by the bold speeches and lec- 
tures of two famous Boston orators, the lawyer 
Wendell Phillips and the minister Theodore 
Parker. At the same time the political atti- 
tude of the extreme abolitionists was very 
unwise. Some of them called the Federal 
Constitution a " covenant with hell," because 
it permitted slavery, and seemed ready to 
see the Union broken up rather than submit 
to the demands of the South. Many anti- 
slavery Whigs, without going to such lengths, 
became disgusted with their party for approv- 
ing the late compromises, and abstained from 
voting at the next election. The Whigs having 
triumphed in 1848 with one of the two chief 
heroes of the Mexican War, now nominated 



164 HoiD the United States became a Nation 

the other, General Scott, The Democrats nomi- 
nated Franklin Pierce, a northern "dough- 
face"; and the Free-soilers nominated John 
Hale, much the ablest of the three candidates. 
There were two hundred and fifty-four electoral 




votes for Pierce and only forty-two for Scott, 
and this crushing defeat put an end to the 
Whig party. Its two great leaders, Webster 
and Clay, had just been removed by death. 
They were succeeded by such men as Sumner, 



The Slave Poicer 165 

Seward, and Chase, declared enemies of slav- 
ery. Calhoun had also died, and a person of 
much smaller caliber, Jefferson Davis, suc- 
ceeded him as leader of the slaveholders. 

The slave power was now at its wits' end 
for new territory in which to extend itself. 
The stars in their courses had begun to fight 
against it. The admission of California gave 
the North a preponderance in the Senate; the 
wonderful grow^th of the northwestern states, 
in which the influence of New England ideas 
was steadily increasing, was giving it a pre- 
ponderance in the lower house ; and a time 
was likely to arrive when the South could no 
longer depend upon the aid of '*■ doughface " 
presidents. It seemed necessary at once to 
get a new slave state to balance California, 
but the available land south of 36° 30' was 
all used up. West of Arkansas lay the Indian 
Territory, while it was a long way across 
Texas to New Mexico ; and on these lines the 
westward movement of white men was likely 
to advance too slowly. The impatience of 
the slave power vented itself but imperfectly 



166 How the United States hecavie a Nation 

in secret and illegal filibustering expeditions 
against Cuba and some of the states of Cen- 
tral America. It was hoped that Cuba might 
be conquered and annexed as a slave state; 
but all these wild schemes failed, and Spain 
could not be persuaded to sell Cuba. A more 
practicable scheme seemed to be to get control 
of the territory lying west of Missouri and 
Iowa, and introduce slavery there. This land 
lay to the north of 36° 30', and was therefore 
forever to be free soil, according to the terms 
of the Missouri Compromise. But with the 
aid of northern '' doughfaces " the South might 
hope to obtain the repeal of that celebrated 
compact; and now once more its wishes were 
gratified, so far as mere legislation could go, 
but it soon became apparent that it was only 
sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind. The 
needed northern leader was found in Stephen 
Douglas, an Illinois Democrat, who hoped to 
become President. He maintained that the 
Compromise of 1850, by leaving the slavery 
question undetermined in New Mexico and 
Utah, had virtually repealed the Missouri 



The Slave Power 



167 



Compromise, and made it necessary to leave 
that question undetermined in the Kansas- 





Nebraska territory. There was no strict logic 
in this doctrine; for Kansas-Nebraska, being 
part of the Louisiana Purchase, was covered 



168 IIoio the United States became a Nation 

by the Missouri Compromise, whereas New 
Mexico-Utah lay wholly outside the area con- 
templated in that agreement. But in the 
stress of political emergencies it is apt to fare 
ill with strict logic. In 1854 the Kansas- 
Nebraska bill was passed, reopening the slav- 
ery question in the lands west of Missouri 
and Iowa. This was substantially a repeal 
of the Missouri Compromise. It was a great 
and alarming concession to the slave power. 
Douglas and his followers intended it to in- 
sure peace, but its immediate consequence 
was the great Civil AVar. 

For according to Douglas' doctrine, which 
was known as " squatter sovereignty," it was 
now to be left to the settlers in Kansas and 
Nebraska whether they would have slavery or 
not. It w^as a plausible doctrine because it 
appealed to that strong love of local self- 
government which has always been one of 
the soundest political instincts of the Ameri- 
can people. But its practical result was to 
create a furious rivalry between North and 
South as to which should get settlers enough 



TJie Slave Power 169 

into Kansas to secure a majority of popular 
votes there. The issue, thus clearly defined, 
at once wrought a new division between polit- 
ical parties. In the autumn of 1854 all the 
northern men who were opposed to the exten- 
sion of slavery, whatever their former party 
names might have been, combined together 
under the name of "Anti-Nebraska Men," 
and succeeded in electing a majority of the 
House of Representatives. Soon afterward 
they took the name of Republicans, and be- 
cause of their alleged fondness for negroes, 
their scornful opponents called them " Black 
Republicans." 

The course of westward migration now be- 
came determined by political reasons. Anti- 
slavery societies subscribed money to hasten 
immigration into Kansas, while Missouri and 
Arkansas poured in a gang of border ruffians 
to make life insecure for northern immigrants 
and deter them from coming. The plains of 
Kansas soon became the scene of wholesale 
robbery and murder. The preliminary phase 
of the Civil War had begun. A state of war 



170 How the United States became a Nation 

existed in Kansas till 1858, when the tide of 
northern immigration had become so strong 




as to sweep away all obstacles and to decide 
that slavery should be forbidden there. Mean- 
while the debates in Congress had grown so 



The Slave Power 171 

fierce as to end in personal violence. In 1856 
Charles Sumner made a speech which exas- 
perated the slaveholders ; and shortly after- 
ward Preston Brooks, a representative from 
South Carolina, sought out Sumner while he 
was writing at his desk in the senate chamber, 
and beat him over the head with a stout cane 
until he had nearly killed him. An attempt 
was made to have Brooks expelled from Con- 
gress, but it failed of the requisite two-thirds 
vote. Brooks then resigned his seat and ap- 
pealed to his constituents, who reelected him 
to Congress by an almost unanimous vote, 
while many southern newspapers loudly ap- 
plauded his conduct. 

In the presidential campaign of 1856 the 
Democrats nominated a northern " dou2:h- 
face," James Buchanan, and indorsed the prin- 
ciple of squatter sovereignty ; the Republicans 
nominated the western explorer Fremont, and 
asserted the right and duty of Congress to 
prohibit slavery in the territories, thus plant- 
ing themselves upon the ground of the Wilmot 
Proviso. A small remnant of " doughface " 



172 HoiD the United States became a Nation 

Whigs nominated Fillmore, and tried to turn 
attention away from the great question at issue 
by protesting against the too hasty natural- 
ization of foreign-born citizens. Buchanan 




obtained one hundred and seventy-four electo- 
ral votes, Fremont one hundred and fourteen, 
and Fillmore eight. The large Republican vote 
showed that the northern people were at last 
awakening to the danger, and it astonished and 



The Slave Fower 173 

alarmed the South. The secessionist feeling 
was diligently encouraged by southern leaders 
who had political ends to subserve by it. The 
slave power became more aggressive than 
ever. The renewal of the African slave 
trade, which had been forbidden since 1808, 
was demanded ; and without waiting for the 
question to be settled, the infamous traffic was 
resumed on a considerable scale and with 
scarcely any attempt at concealment. In the 
summer and autumn of 1857 the English fleet 
which watched the African coast, charged 
with the duty of suppressing the slave trade, 
captured twenty-two vessels engaged in this 
business, and all but one of these were Amer- 
ican. By 1860 the trade had assumed large 
proportions, and was openly advertised in the 
southern newspapers. Not satisfied with this, 
the slaveholders strove to enlist the power of 
the Federal government in actively protecting 
their baneful institution. The principle of 
squatter sovereignty had not served their 
purpose, for they could not compete with the 
North in sending settlers to Kansas, and in 



174 How the United States became a Nation 

the struggle there they were already getting 
worsted. They accordingly threw squatter 
sovereignty to the winds and demanded that 
the Federal government should protect slavery 
in all the territories. The question was brought 
to the test in a case which was decided in the 
Supreme Court in 1857. Dred Scott, a slave 
who had been taken by his owner from Mis- 
souri into free territory, brought suit to obtain 
his freedom. Of the nine judges of the Su- 
preme Court, five were slaveholders and some 
of the others were doughfaces. When the 
case was at last brought before them, it was 
decided that, according to the Constitution, 
slaves were not persons but property, and that 
slave owners could migrate from one part of 
the Union to another and take their negroes 
with them, just as they could take their horses 
and cows, or the bank notes in their waistcoat 
pockets. Two of the judges, Benjamin Curtis 
of Massachusetts and John McLean of Ohio, 
delivered dissenting opinions. 

The revival of the African slave trade at- 
tracted little notice at the time^ in comparison 



The Slave Power 175 

with the Dred Scott decision. The effect of 
the two, taken together, would have been to 
drown the whole Union in a deluge of bar- 
barism, to blight the growth of the Ameri- 
can people both materially and morally, and 
to make us a nuisance in the eyes of the 
civilized world. The northern people refused 
to accept the verdict of the Supreme Court, 
and the northern Democrats, led by Douglas, 
became unwilling to cooperate any longer 
with the Democrats of the South. Some of 
them drifted into the Republican party, others 
tried to maintain the already effete principle 
of squatter sovereignty ; but nearly all were 
driven to the unwelcome conclusion that the 
day of compromises was gone. Thus North 
and South were at last definitely arrayed 
against each other, and the air was full of 
dismal forebodings of war. In the autumn 
of 1859 a blow was struck, slight enough in 
itself, but prophetic of the coming storm. 
John Brown, a Connecticut man of the old 
Puritan type, had been an antislavery leader 
in the Kansas fights. Now with fanatical 



176 Hoiv the United States became a Nation 

fervor he made up his mind to inaugurate a 
crusade against the slave power. With a 
handful of followers he attacked the arsenal 




at Harper's Ferry, in the hope of getting 
arms and setting up in the wild mountains 
of that neighborhood an asylum for fugitive 
slaves. He was, of course, captured and put 



The Slave Power 177 

to death, but his daring act sounded the key- 
note of the approaching conflict. For that 
very reason he got at the moment but little 
sympathy in the North, where the Republican 
majority, content with the moderate policy of 
excluding slavery from the territories, were 
very unwilling to be considered allies of the 
extreme abolitionists, whom they regarded as 
distm'bers of the peace. 

In the presidential election of 1860 there 
were four candidates. The southern Demo- 
crats had separated from the northern Dem- 
ocrats, the Whig doughfaces were not yet 
extinct, while the Republicans were daily 
waxing in strength. The Republicans nom- 
inated Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, and de- 
clared that the Federal government must for- 
bid slavery in the territories. The southern 
Democrats nominated John Breckenridge of 
Kentucky, and declared that the Federal gov- 
ernment must protect slavery in the terri- 
tories. These two parties had the courage of 
their convictions ; the others shuffled, but in 
different ways. 



178 How the United States became a Nation 

The northern Democrats, in nominating 
Douglas, took their stand upon a principle, 
though it was one that had already been 




proved inadequate; they left the question 
of slavery in each territory to be decided by 
the people who should settle in the territory ; 



The Slave Power' 179 

but in order to catch southern votes, they 
made a concession similar to that which Clay 
had made in 1844, and vaguely announced 
themselves as willing to submit to the decision 
of the Supreme Court. Tliis weakness, in 
presence of the Dred Scott verdict, gained 
them no votes at the South, where they could 
not outbid Breckenridge, and it lost them 
many votes at the North. 

The still surviving remnant of doughface 
Whigs nominated John Bell of Tennessee, 
and declared themselves in favor of ''the 
Constitution, the Union, and the enforcement 
of the laws," — a phrase which might mean 
almost anything. These good people were so 
afraid of war that they would fain keep the 
peace by shutting their eyes and persuading 
themselves that the terrible slavery question 
did not really exist, and that all would go 
well if men would only be good and kind to 
one another. 

In the electoral college Lincoln obtained 
one hundred and eighty votes, Breckenridge 
seventy-two. Bell thirty-nine, and Douglas 



180 Hoio the United States became a Nation 

twelve. The popular vote for Douglas was 
very large, but it was not so distributed as 
to gain a majority in any state except Mis- 
souri ; besides the nine electoral votes of that 
state he obtained three in New Jersey. The 
result of the election was a decisive victorv 
for the Republicans. Its significance was far- 
reaching. It not only meant the overthrow 
of the Dred Scott doctrine and squatter sover- 
eignty, but it even went back of the Missouri 
Compromise, and put an immediate stop to 
the extension of slavery into the territories. 
It said not a word about the abolition of slav- 
ery in states where it already existed, but it 
meant that hereafter free labor was to have 
enormous room for expansion, while slave 
labor was to have none. 



THE CIVIL WAR 



181 



THE CIVIL WAR 

The North and South in 18(30. Fort Sumter and Bull Run. 
Affair of the Trent. Success in the West. Merrimac and 
Monitor. McClellan in Virginia. Western campaigns. 
Emancipation of the slaves. The great crisis of the war. 
Chattanooga. Combined operations under Grant. End 
of the war. 

The year of Lincoln's election was the cen- 
sus year in which the population of the United 
States first showed itself greater than that of 
its mother country. In 1776 the population of 
Great Britain and Ireland was about 8,000,000, 
and that of the United States about 3,000,000. 
In 1860 the population of Great Britain and 
Ireland was about 29,000,000, and that of 
the United States was over 31,000,000. The 
agricultural products of the United States far 
surpassed in volume those of any other coun- 
try, and in merchant shipping we were second 
only to Great Britain, — a fact curious and 
sad to contemplate now, when our idiotic 

183 



184 Hoio the United /States became a Nation 

navigation laws have succeeded in nearly 
destroying our merchant marine. Between 
1830 and 1860 the growth of American civ- 
ilization had been prodigious in all directions, 
— in facilities of travel and exchange, in home 
comforts, in manufactures, in literature and 
art, and, above all, in that awakening of 
moral sense which enabled us to jjass un- 
scathed through the terrible ordeal of the 
next four years. 

In all this material and moral progress the 
South had by far the smaller share; not be- 
cause of any natural inferiority in the people, 
but simply because of the curse of slavery, 
which blighted everything within its reach. 
Where labor was held in disrespect, as the 
mark of an inferior caste, immigration would 
not come ; railroads, commerce, and manufac- 
tures would not thrive ; ideas from other parts 
of the modern world were not kindly received ; 
and the advance of civilization was accordingly 
checked. In 1860, besides their 4,000,000 
negro slaves, the seceding states had a white 
population of about 4,000,000 with which to 



The Civil War 185 

contend against 23,000,000 at the North ; and 
this enormous disj)arity was further increased 
by the still greater superiority of the North 
in material resources. The struggle of the 
South for four years against such odds showed 
of what heroic stuff its people were made ; 
]jut they had also one great military advan- 
tage which went far toward neutralizing these 
odds. To win their independence it was not 
necessary for them to conquer the North or 
any part, of it, but only to defend their own 
frontier; whereas, on the contrary, for the 
North to succeed, it was necessary for its 
armies to effect a military occupation of the 
whole vast southern country, and this was in 
some resj)ects a greater military task than 
had ever been undertaken by any civilized 
government. 

In planning secession the southern leaders 
realized how great this military advantage 
was, and they counted upon tlu-ee other ad- 
vantages, which, however, they failed to 
obtain. If they could have won these three 
other advantages, they might have succeeded 



186 Hov) the United States became a Nation 

in establishing their independence. First, 
they expected that all the slave states would 
join in the secession movement, which was far 
from being tlie case. Secondly, they hoped 
that northern Democrats would offer such 
opposition to the Republican administration 
as to paralyze its action. In this they were 
sadly disappointed. As soon as it came to 
war, the great majority of northern Demo- 
crats loyally supported the government ; and 
the party of obstructionists, known as '' Peace 
Democrats," and nicknamed "copperheads," 
was too small to do much harm. Tliirdly, 
the southern leaders hoped to get aid from 
England and France. They believed that 
the English manufactories were so dependent 
upon their cotton that the English govern- 
ment would not allow their coast to be block- 
aded. ''Cotton is king," they said. Then 
the French emperor. Napoleon III, had designs 
upon Mexico that were incompatible with the 
Monroe doctrine, and he would be glad to 
see the power of the United States divided. 
In these hopes, too, they were disappointed. 



TJie Civil War 187 

Napoleon was desirous of recognizing the in- 
dependence of the South, but unwilling to take 
such a step, save in concert with England, 




and he was unable to persuade England. • In 
the latter country there was much difference 
of sentiment, the working people mainly sym- 
pathizing with the North, and fashionable 



188 IIoiv the United States became a Nation 

society with the South; but in spite of great 
suffering from scarcity of cotton, the govern- 
ment could not, without glaring inconsistency, 
while suppressing the African slave trade with 
one hand, lend support to the principal slave 
power on earth with the other. The most it 
could do was to wink at the departure of a few 
blockade runners and privateers from British 
ports. 

As soon as the election of 1860 showed that 
the slave power could no longer control the 
policy of the Federal Union, the state of South 
Carolina called a convention, which on the 
20th December passed its ordinance of seces- 
sion. Other states in which the secessionist 
party was not quite so strong now thought 
it necessary to stand by South Carolina, and 
in the course of January, 1861, Georgia, 
Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and 
Texas passed ordinances of secession. The 
other slave states still held aloof, political opin- 
ions being much divided. In general their 
people disapproved of secession, but did not 
recognize the right of the Federal government 



The Civil War 191 

to defend itself by making war against the 
rebellion in a seceding state. This doctrine 
found expression in the annual message of 
President Buchanan, and his feeble attitude 
encouraged the seceders to believe that by a 
brave show of force they might succeed in 
effecting their purpose without war. In Feb- 
ruary, 1861, delegates from six of the seced- 
ing states met at Montgomery in Alabama, 
organized a government known as the " Con- 
federate States of America," adopted a consti- 
tution, and chose Jefferson Davis for President 
and Alexander Stephens of Georgia for Vice 
President. Their term of office was to be 
six years. Many United States forts and 
arsenals were seized, but a few, and more par- 
ticularly Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor, 
held out. The South Carolinians prepared to 
attack Fort Sumter, and succeeded in prevent- 
ing Buchanan's government from sending sup- 
plies thither. When Mr. Lincoln succeeded to 
office he sent a fleet to aid Fort Sumter ; and 
as soon as the South Carolinians heard of this 
they fired upon the fortress and captured it 



192 Hoiv the United States hecmne a Nation 

without bloodshed. This event aroused fierce 
excitement throughout the North, for it showed 
people what they had hitherto been extremely 
unwilling to believe, — that the South was 




eM^u^ 



ready to fight, and could not be curbed with- 
out war. April 15, two days after the fall of 
Fort Sumter, the President called for 75,000 
troops to put down the rebellion, and the 




Li!ii"ir, "' I, 

im. 






"V.',l 



' 'i'v|l,i 

I ,1 , '1* 

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iliili||,,i'iiii'fl'f'ii'?if''f:''i^''Mj 



11'' ' '','.' Illl 

, '-'iffi'Mi,:.'?;;;! 

"^im^ ' r'1,1'1 

iIIjIIIIiIn",.','!. , ,1 i' I'l' 

'.i.l'll' 



193 



The Civil War 



195 




Fort Sumter after the Bombakd-ment 

From a photograph 

response was so hearty that within two months 
200,000 men were under arms. The first blood 
was shed on the 19th, the anniversary of the 
battle of Lexington, when a Massachusetts regi- 
ment, hurrying to the defense of the Federal 
capital, was fired upon by a mob in Baltimore. 
Many people in the border states were en- 
raged by Mr. Lincoln's call for troops. The 
governors of Arkansas, Tennessee, North Caro- 
lina, and Virginia refused to obey, and those 



196 IIow the United States became a Nation 



states seceded from the Union and joined the 
Confederacy, but not with their full force. 
The people of the Allegheny mountains were 
loyal to the Union ; in eastern Tennessee they 




Montgomery, Alabama, February 8, 1861 

From a contemporary print 

aided the Federals as far as possible ; in Vir- 
ginia they seceded from their own state, and 
formed a new government, known as the 
state of West Virginia, which was afterward 



The Civil War 197 

admitted into the Union. Even thus curtailed, 
the accession of Virginia to the Confederacy 
increased its military strength enormously. 
Its capital was at once removed from Mont- 
gomery up to Richmond, and it became much 




Confederate Capitol at Richmond 

From a print 

easier to threaten Washington or to invade 
the North. Virginia was, besides, the great- 
est and richest of the slave states, and fur- 
nished the southern army with its ablest lead- 
ers, many of whom — such as Lee, Johnston, 



198 HoiD the United States hecame a Nation 

Jackson, and Ewell — were opposed to seces- 
sion, but thought it right to govern their own 
course by that of their state. 

Immense consequences now hung upon the 
action of the other three border states. Mis- 
souri was the most powerful slave state ex- 
cept Virginia, and the geographical position 
of Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland was of 
incalculable military importance. If these 
three states had joined the Confederacy, they 
might have turned the scale in its favor. 
Maryland remained firm through the stead- 
fast loyalty of her governor and the presence 
of Federal troops. In Kentucky and Missouri, 
where the governments were disloyal, the sit- 
uation soon became stormy and doubtful. 

The first campaign east of the Mississippi 
was in West Virginia, from which the Con- 
federate troops were driven in July by Gen- 
eral McClellan. At the same time popular 
impatience prevailed upon General Scott to 
allow a premature and imprudent advance 
towards Richmond. On July 21 General 
McDowell had nearly accomplished the defeat 



The Civil War 



199 




of General Joseph Johnston in the battle of 
Bull Run, when fresh southern troops from 
the Shenandoah valley arrived upon the scene, 
and the Federals were put to flight. Until 



200 Hoio the United States hecame a Nation 

this new arrival the forces were about equally 
matched in numbers. Some five thousand men 
were killed and wounded, so that it was the 
bloodiest battle that had yet been fought in 
America by white men; but its only military 
significance was that it made the South over- 
confident, while it nerved the North to greater 
efforts. Until the following spring there were 
no important operations in the East, except 
that Port Royal and a few other places on the 
coast were captured and held as convenient 
stations for the blockading fleet. The blockade 
was soon made eifective along the whole length 
of the southern coast from the Potomac to the 
Rio Grande, an achievement which most people 
had thought impossible. The command of the 
Army of the Potomac was given to McClellan 
immediately after Bull Run, and in November 
he succeeded Scott as commander in chief of 
the Federal armies. He showed great skill in 
organizing the army, which, under his training, 
became an excellent instrument of warfare. 

Toward the end of the year we came near 
getting into serious trouble with Great Britain. 



The Civil War 2f)l 

Two southern gentlemen, Mason and Sliclell, 
were sent out by the Confederacy as commis- 
sioners to England and France to seek aid 
from those powers. They ran the blockade, 
and at Havana took passage for England in 
the Tre)it, a British steamer. Some distance 
out the Trent was overhauled by an American 
war vessel under Captain Wilkes, and the two 
Confederate agents were taken out and car- 
ried to Boston harbor, where they were impris- 
oned in Fort Warren. This was an exercise 
of the right of search which the United States 
government had always condemned, and to 
put an end to which it had gone to war with 
Great Britain in 1812. The right had been 
relinquished by Great Britain in 1856. It 
was impossible for the United States to uphold 
the act of Captain Wilkes without deserting 
the principles which it had always maintained. 
Mr. Lincoln therefore promptly disavowed the 
act and surrendered the prisoners, although 
such a course was made needlessly difficult for 
him by the blustering behavior of the British 
government, which had immediately begun 



202 Hoio the United States became a Nation 

to threaten war and get troops ready to send 
to Canada. 

In Missouri the secessionist party was very 
strong, and controlled the state government ; 
but it was completely defeated by the boldness 
and sagacity of Francis Blair and Nathaniel 
Lyon, who in May and June, 1861, overturned 
the government and set up a loyal one in its 
place. The prompt action of these two men 
saved Missouri to the Union. After a brief 
career of victoi-y Lyon was defeated and 
killed, August 10, in a severe battle at Wil- 
son's Creek. The Confederates gained little 
from their slight success and their hold grew 
weaker, until, in March, 1862, they were thor- 
oughly and decisively defeated at Pea Ridge, 
in Arkansas, by General Curtis. 

Meanwhile in Kentucky the state govern- 
ment had begun by trying to maintain an 
impossible attitude of neutrality, but the 
Union sentiment grew stronger and stronger, 
until in September the Confederate general, 
Polk, invaded Kentucky and occupied the 
•bluffs at Columbus, blocking the descent of 



The Civil War 203 



the Mississippi river. Kentucky now declared 
for the Union, and General Grant entered the 
state from Illinois and anticij^ated Polk in 
securing the mouths of the Tennessee and 
Cumberland rivers, two great streams which 
were to serve as military highways by which 
the Union armies were to penetrate into the 
heart of the Confederac}'. This was for Grant 
the beginning of a long and successful, though 
fiercely contested, advance. The Confederates 
had set up a defensive line from Columbus on 
the Mississippi river to Cumberland Gap in 
the Alleghenies, and placed in command of it 
Sidney Johnston, an officer of high reputation. 
His headquarters were at Bowling Green, and 
he was confronted by a Federal army under 
General Buell. This was the middle one of 
the three great Federal armies and came to 
be known as the Army of the Cumberland. 
The center of the Confederate line was at 
Forts Henry and Donelson, strongholds in- 
tended to bar the ascent of the two great riv- 
ers. This center was confronted by Grant with 
troops w^hicli presently formed the w^estern 



204 How the United States became a Nation 




one of the three great Federal armies and was 
known as the Army of the Tennessee. The 
right of the Confederate hne was at Millspring, 
and in January it was thoroughly defeated by 
the extreme left division of Buell's army under 
General Thomas. In February, aided by the 
river fleet, Grant captured Fort Henry and 
Fort Donelson, taking fifteen thousand pris- 
oners and breaking through the center of the 
Confederate line. Johnston and Polk were 




205 



The Civil }Var 207 

now obliged to retreat for fear of being cut 
off. Kentucky was secured to tlie Union 
and the greater part of Tennessee recovered. 
Andrew Johnson was appointed mihtary gov- 
ernor of the state. 

The Confederates set up their second defen- 
sive line along the railroad from Memphis to 
Chattanooga and began massing their forces on 
this line at Corinth. The armies of Grant and 
Buell advanced to attack them there. Both 
these armies were now moving under the direc- 
tions of General Halleck, who was intending to 
come from St. Louis and take command in the 
field. Before he arrived there was a great 
battle. Grant w^as at Pittsburg Landing on 
the west bank of the Tennessee river, about 
twenty miles from Corinth, awaiting the ar- 
rival of Buell's army. Johnston moved to 
attack and crush him there before the junc- 
tion of the armies could be effected. There 
ensued on April 6 and 7 the battle of Shiloh, 
in which nearly one hundred thousand men 
were en2i;ag:ed, and lost one fourth of their 
number in killed and wounded. Johnston, 



208 IIow the United States hecame a Nation 

who was one of the slain, came near effect- 
ing his purpose, but Grant's resistance was 
stubborn, and at the close of the first day 
three divisions of Buell's army came upon 
the scene, so that next day the Confederates 
were defeated. This battle decided the fate 
of Corinth, which, however, did not fall for 
several weeks, because the incapable Halleck 
now took command of the Federals. 

While these things were going on the Fed- 
eral fleet under Farragut captured New Orleans 
and laid open the Mississippi river up to Vicks- 
burg; and the river fleet, at first with the aid 
of a small army under Pope, captured Island 
Number 10 and then annihilated the Confed- 
erate river fleet at Memphis. The fall of that 
city and of Corinth broke down the second 
Confederate line of defense and laid open 
Vicksburg on the one hand and Chattanooga on 
the other to the attack of the Federals. Thus 
the first year of active warfare in the West, 
from June, 1861, to June, 1862, was an almost 
unbroken career of victory for the Federal 
armies. To complete the conquest of the 



The Civil War 



209 



Mississippi it was necessary to take Vicksburg, 
and its outpost, Port Hudson, which between 




^<^^r^J& 




them commanded the mouth of the Red river, 
and thus kept open the communications of 



210 Hoiv the United States hecaine a Nation 

the eastern part of the Confederacy with its 
states of Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas. To 
take VickslDurg would lop off these states and 
inflict an irreparable damage upon the fighting 
power of the Confederacy. While this object 
was so important, it was scarcely less important 
for the Federals to hold Chattanooga, and thus 
open the way into Georgia, while preventing 
the Confederates from recovering any of the 
lost ground in Tennessee. But Halleck was un- 
equal to the situation; and while he failed to 
seize Vicksl)urg, which the Confederates soon 
made one of the most formidable strongholds in 
the world, he also failed to seize Chattanooga. 
The great river fights at New Orleans and 
Memphis showed that one of the Confeder- 
acy's chief sources of weakness lay in its 
naval inferiority; but before these fights it 
had seemed for a moment as if it might be 
going to become formidable on the water after 
all. The Confederates took the United States 
frigate Merrimac at Norfolk Navy Yard, and 
transformed her into an ironclad ram with 
sloping sides and huge iron beak. The United 



Tlie Civil War 



211 





States had in Hampton Roads a fleet of five 
of tlie finest wooden war sliips in the world. 
On the 8th of March, 1862, this fleet was 
wretchedly defeated by the Merrimac. Their 
shot bounded harmlessly from her sides, while 
she sank one of the ships with her beak and 
might very likely have sunk them all had not 
darkness stopped the fight. But John Erics- 
son, the inventor of the screw propeller, had 



212 How ihe United States became a Nation 

lately completed his invention of the turret 
ship; and a few hours after the Merrimacs 
victory, the first vessel of this class, the famous 
Monitor, appeared in Hampton Roads. Next 
day she had an obstinate fight with the Merii- 
mac and compelled her to retire from the scene, 
though she could not destroy her. The imme- 
diate effect of this naval battle was to render 
antiquated all the most recently built ships 
then existing in all the navies of the world. 
The naval superiority of the North was no 
more interrupted, and Federal fleets sup- 
ported by small armies went on seizing the 
chief harbors on the southern coast until by 
the end of the war they possessed them all. 

The eastern campaigns were not so success- 
ful as the western, partly because the Confed- 
erate generals were much abler as compared 
with their antagonists, partly because military 
affairs were too much mixed up with politics. 
In advancing upon Richmond, McClellan 
thought it wisest to start by sea and proceed 
up the bank of the James river; but the gov- 
ernment wished him to march directly across 



Tlie Civil War 



213 




Virginia, in order to keep his army always 
interposed between the enemy and Washing- 
ton. McClellan's objection to this course was 
that the natnre of the country offered the 
enemy a series of immensely strong defensive 
lines which could be carried only at a terrible 



214 How tlie United States became a Nation 

cost of life. He was at length allowed to 
follow the James river route, but his plan 
was hampered in a way that ruined it with- 
out protecting Washington. Part of his army 
under McDowell was sent by the direct route 
to Fredericksljurg, and in order to keep his 
right wing within cooperating distance of it, 
he was obliged to move, not close by the James 
river, but by the Chickahominy, with his base 
of supplies on the York river. Small Union 
forces under Banks and Fremont were also 
kept in and about the Shenandoah valley. 
These arrangements were liable to prove very 
disastrous if turned to account by skillful ad- 
versaries. McClellan justly complained that 
his plans were so interfered with as never to 
have left him a fair chance. At the same 
time he seems to have been very far indeed 
from making the best use of the opportunities 
within his reach. At first the Confederates 
kept him a month besieging Yorktown, which 
they then abandoned, and retired into the 
neighborhood of Richmond. In advancing, 
the need for keeping his right wing thrown 



The Civil War 



215 




out toward McDowell brought McClellan into 
an awkward position astride of the Chicka- 
hominy river, which by a sudden rise nearly 
severed the two halves of the army. At the 
end of May the Confederates pounced upon 



216 How the United States hecame a Nation 

one half at Fair Oaks, and in a hard-f ought 
battle it barely saved itself. Joseph Johnston 
was here wounded and his place was taken 
by Robert Lee, who at once called back the 
famous " Stonewall " Jackson from the Shen- 
andoah valley. Jackson had totally defeated 
the forces there and created such a panic in 
Washington that McDowell's force was with- 
drawn for the defense of the capital. McClel- 
lan now decided to change his base from the 
York river to the James and thus secure 
a much better position. But before he had 
effected the change Jackson .had returned 
from the Shenandoah, and the united Con- 
federate army hurled itself upon McClellan 
in the hope of crushing him while making 
the change. After seven days of hard fight- 
ing, June 26 to July 1, with a loss of fifteen 
thousand men on each side, Lee was driven 
off and McClellan reached the James river, 
in a position Avhere he was more dangerous 
to Richmond than before. 

Meanwhile the scattered forces between 
Washington and Richmond were put in 



The Civil War 



217 



command of John Pope, against whom Lee 
presently sent Jackson. Now Halleck, who 
had been brought to Washington and made 




commander in chief, stupidly played into the 
enemy's hands by removing McClellan's army 
from the vicinity of Richmond and bringing 
it around by sea to unite with Pope. Lee's 



218 How the Umted States hecame a Nation 

hands being left quite free by this clumsy 
movement, he forthwith joined Jackson and 
inflicted an ignominious defeat upon Pope at 
Bull Run, August 20. The capital was threat- 
ened ; the country wild with excitement. To 
screen Pope, charges of misconduct and dis- 
obedience were brought against one of his 
ablest officers, Fitz John Porter, who was 
found guilty and dismissed from the army. 
The charges were afterward proved to have 
been groundless, and after a quarter of a cen- 
tury, in spite of the shameful resistance of 
political partisans, General Porter was restored 
to his rank in the army. 

After the overthrow of Pope, the Confed- 
erates pushed on into Maryland, and McClellan 
again commanded the Federals. At Antietam, 
on the 17th of September, a great battle was 
fought between 40,000 Confederates under 
Lee and 60,000 Federals under McClellan, 
who had about 25,000 more troops unused. 
Each side lost about 12,500 men, and at 
the end the advantage was slightly with the 
Federals. Lee retreated slowly into Virginia, 



The Civil War 219 

followed by McClellan, who was blamed for 
not accomplishing more. Early in November 
he was superseded by Burnside, who accom- 
plished still less. 




In June, 1862, the great Union force at 
Corinth was divided, Buell's army marching 
eastward to seize Chattanooga, while Grant's 
remained about Corinth till it should be ready 



220 How the U)iited States hecavie a Nation 

to start for Vicksburg. The campaign was 
so badly managed by Halleck that the Con- 
federates, under Bragg, seized Chattanooga be- 
fore Buell's arrival, and were thus enabled 




to bring such pressure to bear in that direc- 
tion that heavy reenforcements had to be sent 
from Grant to Buell. Thus weakened, Grant 
was unable to advance for several months. 
Meanwhile, Bragg took advantage of his 



The Civil War 221 

superior position to strike across Tennessee and 
invade Kentucky in two columns, one directed 
against Buell's base at Louisville, the other 
one moving through Cumberland Gap toward 




A^ ^y^^^ 



Cincinnati. This bold movement, occurring 
simultaneously with Lee's invasion of Mary- 
land, served to alarm the North, but the Con- 
federates failed to recover any of the ground 



222 How the United States became a Nation 

they had lost. Buell's movements were made 
with great skill, and after a bloody and inde- 
cisive battle between parts of the armies at 
Perryville, October 8, Bragg retreated through 
Cumberland Gap and made his way back to 
Chattanooga. 

While these things were going on, the Con- 
federate army in Mississippi, under Van Dorn, 
made a desperate attempt to tm-n Grant's left 
wing at Corinth, so as to force him back down 
the Tennessee river. That wing was com- 
manded by Rosecrans, who defeated the Con- 
federates at luka, September 19, and Corinth, 
October 3 and 4, and foiled their scheme. Soon 
after this Rosecrans superseded Buell in the 
command of the Army of the Cumberland. 
Bragg had advanced to Murfreesboro, and at 
Stone river, near that town, a battle occurred, 
December 31 to January 2, in which 40,000 men 
were engaged on each side, and each lost more 
than 10,000. Bragg was obliged to retreat to 
Tullahoma ; but the battle decided nothing 
except that it is very hard for Americans to 
defeat Americans, — a point that was fully 



The Civil War 223 

illustrated in the course of this war. By this 
time Grant had begun his first movement 
against Vicksburg, and met with his first 
repulse ; his communications were cut in his 




General Bragg 

rear, and his ablest lieutenant, Sherman, was 
defeated, December 29, in an assault upon 
the bluffs north of the town. 

Since the South had brought on this 
war in defense of slavery, the abolitionist 



224 HoiD the United States became a Nation 

• 

sentiment had grown very rapidly at the North, 
and it had now become supported by the 
military needs of the hour. The summer's 
events had shown that the war was not likely 
soon to be ended ; and there was some fear 
lest England, through distress from the scar- 
city of cotton, should join with France in an 
attempt to bring it prematurely to a close. 
It was also the clear dictate of common sense 
that in wagiug such a terrible and costly war 
the earliest opportunity should be taken of 
striking at the cause of the war ; other- 
wise victory, even when won, could not be 
final, but the seeds of future disease would 
be left in the body politic. The part which 
Mr. Lincoln played at this crisis was that of 
a bold and farsighted statesman, and entitles 
him to rank by the side of Washington in 
the grateful memories of the American peo- 
ple. The Constitution gave, him no author- 
ity to abolish slavery, but there was a broad 
principle of military law that did. In 1836 
John Quincy Adams had declared in Congress 
that, if ever the slave states should become 



The Civil War 225 

the theater of war, the government might 
interfere with shivery in any way that mih- 
tary policy might suggest. Again, in his 
speech of April 14, 1842, he said, in words 
of prophetic clearness : " Whether the war be 
civil, servile, or foreign, I lay this down as 
the law of nations : I say that the military 
authority takes for the time the place of 
all municipal institutions, slavery among the 
rest. Under that state of things, so far from 
its being true that the states where slavery 
exists have the exclusive management of the 
subject, not only the President of the United 
States, but the commander of the army, has 
power to order the universal emancipation 
of slaves." It was upon this theory that Mr. 
Lincoln acted. In announcing it, he seized 
the favorable moment when the tide of south- 
ern invasion had begun to roll back from 
Maryland and Kentucky, and on September 22, 
1862, issued a preliminary proclamation to 
the effect that on the following New Year's 
Day, in all such states as had not by that 
time returned to their allegiance, the slaves 



226 IIow the United States became a Nation 

should be henceforth and forever free. This 
did not affect the slaves in the loyal border 
states, who were left to be set free by other 
measures ; but it practically settled the ques- 
tion that the reestablishment of the author- 
ity of the United States government would 
be attended by the final abolition of slavery. 
For a moment it seemed as if the proclama- 
tion had weakened the Republican vote, but 
it really added incalculable strength to the 
administration ; and as for foreign interven- 
tion, it made it almost impossible, owing to 
Great Britain's attitude toward slavery. 

The first half of the year 1863 was a gloomy 
time, for it was not enough that the Fed- 
eral government should hold its own; it must 
make progress, and no progress seemed to be 
made. Grant found himself bafHed all winter 
by the almost insoluble problem how to in- 
vest Vicksburg. In May, in one of the most 
brilliant campaigns recorded in history, he 
won five battles and laid close siege to that 
stronghold ; but the full measure of his suc- 
cess was not yet reached, and the people were 



The Civil War 



227 



disheartened by defeat in other quarters. In 
middle Tennessee, Bragg and Rosecrans held 
each other in check till the middle of June. 




In Vhginia the incompetent Burnside had been 
terribly defeated by Lee at Fredericksburg, 
December 13, with a loss of more than 12,000 
men. He was superseded by Joseph Hooker, 



228 HoiD the United States hecame a Nation 

from whose cadmirable conduct in subordinate 
positions great hopes were now entertained. 
But at Chancellorsville, May 1 to 4, Lee won 
the most brilliant of all his victories. With 
45,000 men, against Hooker's 90,000, he suc- 
ceeded in maintaining a superiority of num- 
bers at each contested point, until he forced 
his adversary from the field. Lee's loss was 
12,000; Hooker's was 1G,000 ; but the Con- 
federates also lost " Stonewall " Jackson, a 
disaster so great as to balance the victory. 

Lee now played a grand but desperate 
game, and, turning Hooker's right flank, 
pushed on through the western part of Mary- 
land into Pennsylvania, so as to threaten 
Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. 
There was intense alarm at the North. The 
Army of the Potomac was moved northward 
to cover the cities just mentioned, and Hooker 
was superseded in the command by Meade. 
The two armies came into collision at Gettys- 
burg, where in a tremendous battle, July 1 
to 3, Meade at length succeeded in defeat- 
ing Lee. About 82,000 Federals and 74,000 















£ 




i 




Hp 


^ 


1 




^ip 


J 


IE 




^bHm 


^■1 



//^-^^ 



("Stonewall" Jackson) 
229 



Tlie Civil War 231 




Confederates were engaged ; the loss of the 
former was 24,000 ; of the latter, 30,000. That 
is, out of 156,000 men the loss was 54,000, or 
more than one third ; so that the battle of 
Gettysburg was one of the greatest of modern 
times. It marked the turning point of the 
Civil War, but it was not in itself a deci- 
sive victory, like Blenheim or Waterloo. Lee 
moved slowly back to his old position on the 
Rapidan, where he and Meade held each other 
in check until the following spring. 



232 HoiD the United States hecame a Nation 

On the next day after Gettysburg a much 
more decisive triumph was won by Grant in 
the capture of Vicksburg with its whole army 
of defense, nearly thirty-two thousand strong. 
This was the heaviest blow that had yet been 
dealt to the Confederacy; its whole western 
zone was now virtually conquered, and it 
became possible to concentrate greater forces 
asrainst its middle and eastern zones. The 
news of Gettysburg and Vicksburg made the 
Fourth of July, 18G3, a day of rejoicing at 
the North, albeit of mourning in thousands 
of bereaved homes. The next note of victory 
was sounded on Thanksgiving Day. 

Late in June Rosecrans began a series 
of skillful movements aQ[;ainst Brasrg, wdiich 
caused him to fall back into Chattanooga. 
Early in September, by moving against his 
communications, Rosecrans forced him to 
evacuate that place ; but in maneuvering 
among the mountains the Union general 
suddenly discovered that he had misinter- 
preted his adversary's movements and thus 
had dangerously extended his own lines. 



The CivU War 



233 




While thereupon engaged in concentrating 
his forces upon Chattanooga, he was attacked 
by Bragg, who had meanAvhile been heavily 
reenforced from Virginia. A terrible battle 
was fought September 19 and 20, in Chicka- 
mauga valley, between 55,000 Federals and 
70,000 Confederates, in which each side lost 
one third of its number. After an extraordi- 
nary series of mishaps had led to the total 
rout of the Federal right wing, the army was 
saved by the magnificent skill and bravery of 



234 How the United States became a Nation 

Thomas, who commanded on the left. Rose- 
crans occupied Chattanooga, but in sucli a 
plight that he seemed in danger of losing 
it and his army also. He was besieged by 
Bragg, who occupied the strong positions 
of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, 
commanding the town. In October Rose- 
crans was superseded l)y Thomas, and Grant 
was put in command of all the armies be- 
tween the Mississippi and the Alleghenies. 
Reenforcements under Hooker were sent from 
Virginia, and Sherman came up from Vicks- 
burg with a large part of the Army of Ten- 
nessee. In the brilliant battle of Chattanooga, 
November 24 and 25, the Confederates were 
totally defeated, and Grant won another prize 
of scarcely less value than Vicksburg. The 
area of the Confederacy was now virtually cut 
down to the four states of Georgia, the Caro- 
linas, and Virginia. 

In March, 1864, Grant superseded Halleck 
as commander in chief, with the rank of lieu- 
tenant general. Grant now gave his personal 
supervision to the Army of the Potomac, while 



The Cwil War 



235 




retaining Meade in immediate command. 
After the battle of Chattanooga the defeated 
Confederates had retired to Dalton, in Georgia, 
where Bragg was superseded by Jolmston. 
The Union anny opposed to Johnston was 
commanded by Sherman, and early in May a 
simultaneous forward movement was begun 
in Georgia and in Virginia. 

Grant had won his great victories at Vicks- 
burg and Chattanooga not by hard pounding 



236 HoiD the United States became a Nation 

so much as by skillful strategy. Twice 
at Vicksburg he had tried the hammering 
process without success. In Virginia, having 
an immense superiority in numbers (122,000 
against 62,000), he at first tried to crush Lee 
by simple hammering. In pursuing the direct 
route through Fredericksburg to Richmond, 
he encountered a series of strong defensive 
positions of which Lee availed himself with 
consummate skill. In assaulting these posi- 
tions, Grant generally failed ; but his supe- 
riority in numbers enabled him to operate 
against Lee's right flank and slowly push him 
back to the Chickahominy. After a month 
of this terrible warfare, including the battles 
of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, and Cold 
Harbor, Grant had lost sixty-four thousand 
men, or more than the whole army witli 
which Lee started. Having now reached the 
Chickahominy, and finding it impossible to 
break through Lee's lines of defense. Grant 
changed his plan of campaign and swung 
round upon Petersburg to operate against 
the southern communications of Richmond. 



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237 



The Civil War 239 

Here Lee succeeded in holding bim at bay 
for nine montbs, with forces constantly weak- 
ening. Grant's losses could be repaired, but 
Lee's could not. 

The North, indeed, was still rich and flour- 
ishing, while the Confederacy was at the end 
of its resources- The food supply from the 
West was cut off, clothes and tools were giv- 
ing out, and the blockade was stricter than 
ever. Farragut's great victory in Mobile bay 
closed up that entrance in August, while on 
the ocean the chief Confederate cruisers were 
captured. One of these cases, the destruction 
of the famous Alabama in June by the Kear- 
sarge, off the coast of France, was especially 
interesting, as the Alahama was British-built 
and manned by British seamen and gunners, 
and the contest seemed to teach a similar 
lesson to those of 1812. The guns of the 
Kearsarge sent her to tlie bottom in an hour. 

Sherman's campaign in Georgia revealed 
the exhausted condition of the Confederacy. 
He advanced from Chattanooo;a with 100.000 
men against Johnston's weaker force of 75,000, 



240 Hoiv tlie United States heeame a Nation 

and by a series of skillful flank movements 
pushed him back upon Atlanta after three bat- 
tles, — at Resaca, Dallas, and Kenesaw Moun- 
tain, — in which the Federals lost altogether 
about 14,000 men and the Confederates about 
11,000. Johnston's conduct had been ex- 
tremely skillful, but he was now removed from 
command. His successor. Hood, believed in 
hard blows, and soon received some in two 
fierce sorties from Atlanta, July 22 and 28, in 
which he lost 13,000 men to Sherman's 4000. 
On September 2 Sherman took Atlanta. Hood 
now made a fatal mistake. He moved north- 
westward by Tuscumbia and Florence into mid- 
dle Tennessee, thinking that Sherman would 
follow him. But instead Sherman divided his 
army, sending back part of it under Thomas 
to deal with Hood, while he himself prepared 
to continue his advance through Georgia. 
Hood, moving northw^ard, was first defeated 
at Franklin, November 30, with heavy loss, by 
Schofield. Then Hood encountered Thomas 
in a great battle at Nashville, December 15 
and 16. Hood had about 44,000 men, Thomas 



The Civil War 



241 




]0 _ 

General Hood 

about 56,000. The Federals lost about 3000 
men ; the Confederates were totally defeated, 
with a loss of 15,000, and in the pursuit which 
followed, their army ceased to exist. Of all 
the battles fought in the course of the war, 
this was the most completely a victory. Mean- 
while Sherman started from Atlanta about 
the middle of November, with 60,000 men 
marched unopposed through Georgia to the 
seacoast, and captured Savannah December 21. 
Throughout the North congratulations over 



242 How the United States became a Nation 

these remarkable campaigns mingled with the 
Christmas greetings. 

The foregoing survey shows the Union arms 
as having advanced from the beginning with 
remarkable steadiness and rapidity toward the 
overthrow of the Confederacy; but very few 
people were able to see this until after it was 
all over. These four years seemed very long 
while they were passing, and as people were 
always hoping for a colossal blow which would 
at once end the war, they failed to take ac- 
count of the steady progress which was really 
being made. Besides this, the operations near 
Washington naturally assumed more promi- 
nence in people's eyes than the western opera- 
tions, and here the prolonged resistance of Lee 
served further to confuse the popular estimate 
of passing events. Lee's defensive warfare 
was one of the most wonderful things in 
history, and imposed upon people's imagina- 
tions till they were almost ready to forget 
that even he could not hold out indefinitely, 
without a Confederacy behind him. Even in 
the summer of 1864 Lee was able to alarm 



Jlie Civil War 



243 



the government at Washington by sending 
the gallant Early on an expedition down the 
Shenandoah valley, like that which Jackson 
had conducted two years before. In a very 




f/j"/^^ 



^a^^^ 



able and romantic campaign Sheridan com- 
pletely defeated Early ; but the impression 
produced upon the northern mind w^as great. 
In the nominatinoj conventions held in the 



244 HoiD the United States became a Nation 

course of the summer, between the battle of 
Spottsylvania and Sherman's capture of At- 
lanta, the Republicans nominated Lincoln for 
reelection; but some radical Republicans, who 
condemned his measures as too feeble, nom- 
inated Fremont, and the Democrats, with 
scarcely less absurdity, in nominating McClel- 
lan, demanded that peace should be made on 
the ground that the war was a failure. Before 
the election Fremont withdrew his name. 
McClellan obtained twenty-one electoral votes 
from New Jersey, Delaware, and Kentucky; 
the two hundred and twelve votes of the other 
states not in rebellion were given to Lincoln. 

Early in 1865 the Confederacy fell so sud- 
denly that it seemed like the collapse of a 
bubble. The year opened auspiciously with 
Schofield's capture of Wilmington, the last 
Confederate port except Charleston, which 
fell as soon as Sherman's northward march 
began. He advanced through the Carolinas, 
partly over the same route taken by Cornwallis 
in 1781. From various quarters Johnston con- 
trived to gather forty thousand men to oppose 



The Civil War 245 

him, but was defeated near Goldsborough, 
March 19. By this time Lee had made up 
his mind to abandon Petersburg and Rich- 
mond, move by way of Danville, and eifect 
a junction with Johnston. To prevent such a 
concentration of forces Grant moved Sheri- 
dan southwesterly to Five Forks, upon Lee's 
right or southern flank. Here Sheridan in 
the last battle of the war secured his position. 
To avoid being outflanked Lee was forced to 
lengthen his line, already too weak ; and now 
Grant with a hundred thousand men broke 
through it. The Confederate government fled 
from Richmond, and Lee, driven westward, 
was headed off at Appomattox Courthouse, 
where on April 9 he surrendered his army, 
now reduced to twenty-six thousand men. 
A fortnight later Johnston surrendered to 
Sherman and the war was ended. Never 
was an overthrow more complete and final 
than that of the Confederacy, and never had 
soldiers fought more gallantly than those who 
were now surrendered. All were at once set 
free on parole, and no dismal executions for 



246 How the United States became a Nation 

treason were allowed to sully the glorious 
triumph of the United States. The public 
rejoicings were clouded by the death of the 
wise and gentle Lincoln, struck down in the 
moment of victory by the hand of a wretched 
assassin. His name will forever be remem- 
bered side by side with the name of Wash- 
ington; for he was in many ways the second 
founder of the United States. The work of 
unparalleled glory begun by Washington — of 
founding a nation so peaceful and so mighty 
that, through its own peaceful development, 
it might by and by sow broadcast over the 
world the seeds of permanent peace among 
men — was brouo:ht to its next stasre of com- 
pletion by Lincoln. So long as the chief 
source of contention remained, the future 
might well seem doubtful. The work of 
1770 first came to full fruition in 1865; and 
when this is duly considered, it reveals the 
moral grandeur of American history and sug- 
gests lessons which we shall all do well to 
learn. 



INDEX 



Abolitionists, 132 

Adams, Charles Francis, 156 

Adams, John, 28, 28 

Adams, John Quincy, 77, 107; 
elected President, 122 ; elect- 
ed to the House of Repre- 
sentatives, 132 ; opinions of, 
on slavery, 224 

African slave ti-ade, renewal 
of, 173 

Alabama, 239 

Alabama admitted to the 
Union, 112 

Alaska, 141 

Alien and sedition acts, 31 

Antietam, battle of, 218 

Anti-Federalists, 18 

"Anti-Nebraska Men," 169 

Appomattox Courthouse, 245 

Argus, 85 

Arkansas admitted to the 
Union, 119 

Army of the Cumberland, 203 

Army of the Potomac, 200, 228 

Army of the Tennessee, 204 

Atlanta, 240 

Bainbridge, Captain, 83 
Baltimore, 100, 195 
Bancroft, George, 131 



Banks, General, 214 
Barclay, Commodore, 94 
Battle of Antietam, 218; Bu- 
ena Vista, 152 ; Bull Run 
(1st), 199; Bull Run (2d), 
218; Chancellorsville, 228; 
Chattanooga, 234 ; Chicka- 
mauga, 233 ; Chippewa, 94 ; 
Cold Harbor, 236 ; Corinth, 
222 ; Dallas, 240; Fair Oaks, 
216; Five Forks, 245; Fort 
Erie, 95; Franklin, 240; 
Fredericksburg, 227 ; Get- 
tysburg, 228; Goldsborough, 
245; Kenesaw Mountain, 
240; Lundy's Lane, 94; 
Murfreesboro, 222 ; Nash- 
ville, 240 ; Pea Ridge, 202 ; 
Perryville, 222; Resaca, 240; 
San Jacinto, 144; Seven 
Days', 216; Shiloh, 207; 
Spottsylvania, 236 ; Stone 
River, 222 ; Tippecanoe, 78 ; 
Wilderness, 236; "Wilson's 
Creek, 202 
Bell, John, 179 
Benton, Thomas, 121, 157 
Berlin and Milan decrees, 67,77 
Blglow Papers, 154 
Birney, James, 147 



247 



248 How tlie United States hecame a Nation 



Blair, Francis, 202 

Blockade in the Civil War, 
200, 239 

Bonaparte, Napoleon, 28, 48, 
57, 77, 99 

Bragg, 220, 227, 232; super- 
seded by Johnston, 235 

Breckenridge, John, 177 

Brock, General, 92 

Broke, Captain, 84 

Brooks, Preston, 171 

Brougham, Lord, 50 

Brown, Jacob, 94 

Brown, John, 175 

Bryant, William Cullen, 131 

Buchanan, elected President, 
172 ; attitude of, toward 
secession, 191 

Buell, General, 203, 207, 219; 
superseded by Rosecrans, 222 

Buena Vista, 152 

Bull Run, 199, 218 

Burnside, supersedes McClel- 
lan, 219; defeated at Fred- 
ericksburg, 227 ; superseded 
by Hooker, 227 

Burr, Aaron, 50, 64, 99 ; duel 
of, with Hamilton, 65 ; tried 
for treason, 66 

Burrows, Lieutenant, 85 

Calhoun, J. C, 78, 143, 151 
California, 152, 158 ; admitted 

to the Union, 159 
Canada, invasion of, 92, 94 
Cass, Louis, 156 



Chancellorsville, battle of, 228 
Charleston, 244 
Chase, 165 
Chase, Judge, 55 
Chattanooga, 208, 220, 234 
Chesapeake, 69, 84 
Chickamauga valley, 233 
Chihuahua, 152 
Chippewa, battle of, 94 
Clay, Henry, elected Speaker 
of the House, 78 ; author of 
Missouri Compromise, 110; 
candidate for President, 122 ; 
candidate a second time, 
147 ; death of, 164 
Clinton, De Witt, 80 
Clinton, George, Vice Presi- 
dent, 64 ; reelected, 75 
Cold Harbor, battle of, 236 
Compromise of 1850, 159, 166 
Compromise Tariff, 129 
Condition of America in 1789, 5 
Condition of the South in 1860, 

184 
Confederacy, collapse of, 244 
"Confederate States of Amer- 
ica," 191 
Constellation , 27 
Constitution, 81, 83, 86 
Constitution adopted, 18 ; 

twelfth amendment to, 52 
Cooper, James Fenimore, 131 
"Copperheads," 186 
Corinth, 208 ; battle of, 222 
Cotton gin, invention of, 114 
Crawford, William, 78, 122 



Index 



249 



Creek Indians, 96 
Cuba, 166 

Cui'tis, Benjamin, 174 
Curtis, General, 202 

Dallas, 240 

Davis, Jefferson, 165 ; cliosen 
President of the Confeder- 
ate States, 191 

Decatur, 82 

Democrats, 19, 123 

Detroit, 23, 92, 94 

Doniphan, 152 

"Doughfaces," 159 

Douglas, Stephen, 166, 175, 178 

Dred Scott case, 174 

Early, General, 243 
Emancipation, 225 
Embargo act, 70 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 131 
Emigration, 130 
End of the Civil War, 245 
England, trouble with, 67, 200 
Enterprise, 85 
" Era of good feelhig," 108 
Ericsson, John, 130, 211 
Erie canal, 119 
Essex, 81, 86 
Ewell, General, 198 
Explorations of Lewis and 
Clark, 59, 142 

Eair Oaks, battle of, 216 
Earragut, 208 
Federal Constitution, 8 



Federalists, 18 

"Fifty-four forty or fight," 
143 

Filibustering expeditions, 166 

Fillmore, Millard, becomes 
President, 159 

Five Forks, battle of, 245 

Florida sold to United States, 
108 

Fort Donelson, 203, 204 

Fort Erie, battle of, 95 

Fort Henry, 203, 204 

Fort Meigs, 93 

Fort Mimms, massacre at, 
96 

Fort Sumter, 191 

Fort Wayne, 73 

France, trouble with, 24 

Franklin, battle of, 240 

Fredericksburg, battle of, 227 

Free-soil party, 156 

Fremont, conquers California, 
152; nominated for Presi- 
dent, 171; in the Shenan- 
doah valley, 214 ; nominated 
for President, 244 

French Revolution, 20 

Fugitive slave law, 159 

Fulton, Robert, 110 

Garrison, William Lloyd, 132 
Genet, "Citizen," 21 
Gettysburg, battle of, 228 
Gold discovered in California, 

158 
Goldsborough, battle of, 245 



250 HoiD the United States became a Nation 



Grant, in Kentucky, 203 ; in 
Tennessee, 204 ; at Shiloh, 
207 ; near Corinth, 219 ; bril- 
liant campaign of, 220 ; cap- 
tures Vicksburg, 232 ; super- 
sedes Halleck, 234 ; advances 
on Richmond, 236 ; at Appo- 
mattox, 245 

Guerrlere, 81 

" Hail Columbia," 27 

Hale, John, 164 

Halleck, General, 207, 208, 
210, 217 ; superseded b^ 
Grant, 234 

Hamilton, Alexander, Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, 11, 12 ; 
financial measures of, 13, 
18 ; leader of the Federalists, 
20 ; stoned on the street, 23 ; 
dislike between Adams and, 
28 ; duel of, with Burr, 65 

Hampton Roads, 212 

Harmar, General, 17 

Harper's Ferry, 176 

Harrison, General, 78, 92, 94 ; 
elected President, 140; death 
of, 141 

Hartford Convention, 102 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 131 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 131 

" Holy Alliance," 108 

Hood supersedes Bragg, 240 

Hooker, Joseph, supersedes 
Burnside, 227 ; superseded 
by Meade, 228 



Hornet, 83, 87 
Houston, General, 144 
Hull, Isaac, 81 
Hull, William, 92 

Illinois admitted to the Union, 
112 

Impressment of American sea- 
men, 23, 68, 103 

Indian Territory, 165 

Indiana admitted to the Union, 
112 

Indians, trouble with, 17, 96, 
108 

Iowa admitted to the Union, 
158 

Irving, Washington, 131 

Island Number 10, 208 

luka, 222 

Jackson, Andrew, subdues the 
Creeks, 99 ; defeats the Brit- 
ish at New Orleans, 101 ; con- 
quers the Seminoles, 108; 
popular hero of the West, 
121, 135; candidate for 
President, 122 ; elected Pres- 
ident, 123 ; character of, 135 

Jackson, "Stonewall," 198, 
216, 217; death of, 228 

Jay's treaty, 23, 24 

Jefferson, Thomas, Secretary 
of State, 14 ; leader of Re- 
publican party, 19 ; becomes 
Vice President, 23 ; elected 
President, 51 , inauguration 



Index 



251 



of, 52 ; second administra- 
tion of, 64 

Johnson, Andrew, appointed 
military governor of Ten- 
nessee, 207 

Johnston, Joseph, 197, 199, 
216; supersedes Bragg, 
235 ; superseded by Hood, 
240; defeated near Goldsbor- 
ough, 245 ; surrenders, 245 

Johnston, Sidney, 203, 204, 207 

Jones, Paul, 82 

Kansas-Nebraska bill, 168 

Kearney, 152 

Kearsarge, 239 

Kenesaw Mountain, 240 

Kentucky secured to the 
Union, 207 

Kentucky and Virginia reso- 
lutions, 32 

King, Kufus, 04, 75, 107 

Lawrence, Captain, 83 

Lear, Tobias, 42 

Lee, Robert E., 197, 216; at 
Bull Run, 218 ; at Antietam, 
218 ; invades Maryland, 221 ; 
at Chancellorsville, 228; de- 
feated at Gettysburg, 228; 
in the Wilderness, 236; 
militai-y skill of, 242 ; sur- 
renders, 245 

Lewis, Lawrence, 38, 47 

Lewis and Clark expedition, 
59, 142 



Lincoln, Abraham, elected 
President, 179; sends fleet 
to Sumter, 191; calls for 
troops, 192 ; as a statesman, 
224; issues preliminary 
proclamation of emancipa- 
tion, 225 ; reelected, 244 ; 
death of, 246 
Literature, growth of, 131 
Longfellow, Henry Wads- 
worth, 131 
Louisiana admitted to the 

Union, 111 
Louisiana Purchase, 57 
Lowell, James Russell, 154 
Lundy's Lane, battle of, 94 
Lyon, Nathaniel, 202 

McClellan, drives Confeder- 
ates from West Virginia, 
198 ; supersedes Scott, 200 ; 
advances on Richmond, 
212 ; in Seven Days' battles, 
216; at Antietam, 218; 
superseded by Burns id e, 
219; nominated for Presi- 
dent, 244 

Macdonough, Commodore, 96 

McDowell, 198, 214, 216 

McLean, John, 174 

Madison elected President, 75 ; 
reelected, 81 ; pardons Hull, 
92 

Maine admitted to the Union, 
112 

Marcy, William, 136 



252 How the United States became a Nation 



Marshall, Chief Justice, 55 

Mason and Slidell, 201 

Massacre at Fort Mimms, 9G 

Meade supersedes Hooker, 228 

Memphis, 208 

Merrimac, 210 

Mexican War, 152 

Michigan, 92 ; admitted to the 
Union, 119 

Mississippi admitted to the 
Union, 112 

Missouri, admitted to the 
Union, 112; saved to the 
Union, 202 

Missouri Compromise, 116 

Monit)r, 212 

Monroe, James, minister to 
France, 24 ; elected Presi- 
dent, 107 ; reelected, 107 

Monroe doctrine, 109 

Morris, Gouverneur, 24 

Murfreesboro, battle of, 222 

Napoleon Bonaparte, 28, 48, 

57, 77, 99 
Napoleon III, 186 
Nashville, battle of, 240 
National Bank, 124, 137, 138, 

141 
"National Republicans," 123 
Naval victories, 81 
Navy, American, in 1812, 88 
New Mexico, 152, 159 
New Orleans, expedition 

against, 100 ; captured by 

Farragut, 208 



New York, 119 

Non-intercourse act, 71 ; re- 
pealed, 77 
Nullification, 33, 128 

Ohio admitted to the Union, 56 

Old Ironsides, 87 

Orders in council, 67; revoked, 

78 
Oregon, 60, 142 

Pakenham, Sir Edward, 101 

Panic, commercial, 138 

Parker, Theodore, 163 

Parties, rise of, 18 

Pea Ridge, battle of, 202 

Peace Democrats, 186 

Peacock, 86, 87 

Peacock (British brig), 83 

Perry, Commodore, 94 

Perryville, battle of, 222 

Petersburg, 236 

Phillips, Wendell, 163 

Pierce, Franklin, elected Presi- 
dent, 164 

Pinckney, Cotesworth, 24, 50, 
64, 75 

Polk, General, 202, 204 

Polk, James K., 147; elected 
President, 148 

Pope, General, 208, 217; de- 
feated at Bull Run, 218 

Population of United States in 
1860, 183 

Port Royal, 200 

Porter, Captain, 81, 86 



Index 



253 



Porter, Fitz John, General, 218 
Prescott, W. H., 131 
President, 78 
Privateers, American, 88 
Proctor, General, 93, 94 
Protection, policy of, 15, 124 

Queenstown Heights, 92 

Railroad, first American, 129 
Keform movements, 132 
Republicans, 19, 107, 121, 169, 

180 
Resaca, battle of, 240 
Richmond, capital of the Con- 
federate States, 197 ; aban- 
doned by Confederate gov- 
ernment, 245 
Right of search, 68, 78, 103, 201 
Rosecrans, supersedes Buell, 
222 ; in Tennessee, 227 ; at 
Chattanooga, 232 ; super- 
seded by Thomas, 234 
Rotation in office, 136 

St. Clair, General, 18 

San Jacinto, battle of, 144 

Santa Anna, 144 

Savannah, 241 

Schofield, General, 240, 244 

Scott, General Winfield, 94, 

152, 164, 198 
Screw propeller, 130 
Secession, threatened, 71; 

ordinances of, 188 
Seminole Indian troubles, 108 



Seward, 165 
Shannon, 84 

Shenandoah valley, 216, 243 
Sheridan, General, 243 
Sherman, General, 223, 234, 
235, 239 ; march of, to the 
sea, 241; northward march 
of, 244 
Shiloh, battle of, 207 
Slave trade, 173 
Slavery, growth of, 112 ; oppo- 
sition to, 155 
Slidell, 201 

South, condition of , In 1 860, 1 84 
Spoils system, 136 
Spottsylvania, battle of, 236 
Squatter sovereignty, 168 
State debts, assumption of, 14 
Steamboat, invention of, 110 
Stephens, Alexander, 191 
Stewart, Captain, 86 
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 60 
Subtreasury system, 138 
Sumner, Charles, 164 ; attack 

on, 171 
Sumter, Fort, 191 
Supreme Court, 32, 55 

Talleyrand, 25, 27 

Tariff, 124, 128 

Taxation of whisky, 16 

Taylor, General, 152; elected 
President, 156 ; death of, 159 

Tecumseh, attacks northwest- 
ern settlements, 78 ; death 
of, 94 



254 IIoiD the United States became a Nation 



Texas, 144 ; admitted to the 
Union, 151 

Thomas, General, 204 ; super- 
sedes Rosecrans, 234 ; at 
Nashville, 240 

Tippecanoe, battle of, 78 

Treaty, of Ghent, 102; with 
Mexico, 154 

Trent, 201 

Tripolitan War, 60 

Troops called for by President 
Lincoln, 192 

Truxtun, Captain, 27 

Twelfth amendment, 52 

Tyler becomes President, 141 

Uncle Tom's Cab'.n, 160 

United States, 82 

United States, conditions in, 

in 1789, 5; growth of, 110, 

129, 142, 183 
Utah, 159 

Valcour Island, 96 

Van Buren, Martin, elected 
President, 138 ; second nom- 
ination, 156 

Van Dorn, 222 

Vans Murray. 27 

Vicksburg, 208, 210 ; captured 
by Grant, 232 



War with Mexico, 152 

Washington, George, 11 ; sup- 
presses insurrection, 16; 
national policy of, 20 ; re- 
fuses a third term, 23 ; ap- 
pointed to the command of 
army, 26 ; at Mount Vernon, 
34 ; death of, 44 ; character 
of, 48 

Washington, selected as capi- 
tal, 14 ; condition of, in 1801, 
52 ; public buildings burned 
at, 100 

Wasp, 82, 86 

Wayne, General, 18 

Webster, Daniel, 131, 104 

West, the young, 120; migra- 
tion to the, 119, 142, 158, 169 

West Virginia, 196 

Whigs, 124, 164 

Whisky insurrection, 16 

Whitney, Eli, 113 

Whittier, John Greenleaf, 131 

Wilderness, battle of the, 236 

Wilkes, Captain, 201 

Wilmington, 244 

Wilmot Proviso, 156, 171 

Wilson's Creek, battle of, 202 

Winchester, General, 92 

Wisconsin admitted to the 
Union, 158 



Wabash river, 17, 23 
War of 1812, declaration of, 
78 ; opposition to, 79 



X.Y.Z. dispatches, 26 



Yorktown, 214 



OPYDELTIOCAT.DIV 

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